Above: Antigua (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Antigua and Barbuda is planning to “fundamentally revamp” its marketing and promotion strategy for tourism, according to Tourism Minister John Maginley.

At the forefront will be an overhauled online marketing presence, including a new Web site, according to a government release.

The site will reportedly be available in seven languages, and will replace all pre-existing destination sites. It will also have iPhone and iPad apps.

It is sent to launch on Monday.

Maginley said the government would also continue to push its “five fundamental growth pillars” for tourism, including a strong enabling environment, human resource development, product development, marketing, promotion

“As we stand now, our numbers are looking better this year,” he said following the 2013 Throne Speech. “We see a general trend up — more importantly for us, we’re seeing that hotel room rates are stable and moving up in some cases —we’re very happy with that.”

He also pointed to increased traffic out of the European market, including air carrier Condor, which will be shifting from charter service to flying scheduled flights out of Germany, and Blue Panorama, which will be running a schedule out of Italy.

Those are both markets “we want to push some more,” he said.