Brades, Montserrat (February 1st, 2010): The Montserrat Tourist Board (MTB) announces the winning applications of the Tourism Challenge Fund (TCF). The TCF was introduced as a component of Phase II of the Tourism Development Projects, which is jointly funded by UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union (EU).
The TCF makes available grant funding to facilitate the development of a range of innovative tourism-related projects and events in Montserrat. The main eligibility criteria for projects seeking grants are that they will lead to increased visitor numbers, increased visitor satisfaction and increased visitor expenditure.
As in the first round, the evaluation of the TCF applications was undertaken by an independent selection panel, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), based in Barbados. The CTO comprises highly experienced tourism professionals with extensive experience in tourism policy, planning, development and business planning. The use of the CTO as the selection panel assured the public of the impartiality and transparency of the selection process for grant awards.
In this second round, only a small number of applications were successful as many of the projects did not meet the criteria of increased visitor numbers, increased visitor satisfaction and increased visitor expenditure.
The following projects were chosen for the award of grants:
* The Montserrat Cultural Centre
* Scriber’s Adventure Tours
* Just Do It
* Shamrock Moorings Plus
* The Montserrat Reef Project
These projects are expected to make significant contributions to the economy of Montserrat.
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