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-- Belize City, Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 – The Belize Tourism Board is pleased to announce its new Director of Tourism, Ms. Seleni Matus.
Advisor for the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB)’s Mesoamerican Reef Tourism Initiative, Seleni Matus has more than five years of managerial experience in ecotourism and sustainable development. Her work experience includes project design and management, sustainable tourism strategy development, business planning for small and medium-size enterprises, marketing and promotion, fundraising, partnership development, and training and community capacity building. In her current capacity at Conservation International, Seleni provides technical support and oversight for implementation of CELB’s travel and leisure engagements in northern Mesoamerica.
Seleni also worked as Ecotourism Manager at Conservation International providing capacity-building and technical assistance to country programs in Latin America. Seleni has also worked at a leading conservation NGO in Belize, Programme for Belize, where she managed the organization’s ecotourism operations and provided technical support to its headquarters and field stations. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico), serving as a founding member and its first President.
Through her efforts with Conservation International, she was the lead adviser in the formulation of an Environmental Action Plan for Belize, the first of its kind, which had the potential to serve as a model for cruise lines travel destinations around the world. This Environmental Action Plan provided a framework to facilitate the sustainability of cruise tourism in Belize and involved stakeholders in the process.
Seleni brings a wealth of experience working in the tourism industry with countries in the region and engaging local and international stakeholders in sustainable development programs in those countries and in Belize. Ms. Matus is expected to assume her post shortly.
Ms. Matus holds a Masters Degree (With Distinction) in Corporate Strategy and Governance from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom and a Bachelor’s Degree in Personnel Management from Viterbo College. She has ten years of professional experience in designing and directing innovative initiatives that have mainstreamed sustainable tourism principles into key sectors of the tourism industry.
For more information on the developments and events in Belize’s Tourism Industry, please contact the Marketing Department at the Belize Tourism Board at (501)-227-2420, via email: btbb@btl.net or visit our website www.belizetourism.org.
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