I have been writing about Wichita Villacres for thirty years. We met on the board of the PTA of the International School of Aruba. She always had the craziest fund raising ideas, and one year we hit a record $60.000, not bad for a school PTA in Aruba, in the late 80s, just before the stock market crash and Black Monday.
She started talking about group travel early on. Instead of just booking individuals she dreamed of delivering group business to the island, MICE, meetings, incentives, conferences and expositions, representing clients with deep pockets interested in extravagant events and over the top productions.
At the time in the early 90, Aruba had a limited supply of rooms, no conference centers, and no infrastructure to service the type of client Wichita had in mind. But she established ECO Destination Management Services, and she was getting ready.
She talked about group business, travelled the world to find it, then finally in 1993, she helped showcased the island to a large group of buyers, for the first time, members of the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE). They came to Aruba to kick our tires, check the island out and determine if it will suit their particular finicky needs.
I was among those seated on the pool deck of La Cabana Beach Resort & Casino, for a Mexican lunch with the Site delegates. Of course I did not get the magnitude of the moment. Mo Baghiri, the Food & Beverage manager of the resort at the time, had to come up with a fast lunch for what I remember as hundreds of super important visitors. The pool deck was jam-packed with delegates seated at round tables, they only had 20 minutes for lunch on their busy Explore Aruba schedule, and Mo had to dazzle them with his resort’s culinary excellence.
He picked a Mexican menu, serving fajitas. It was a success. Group business for Aruba finally took off, because of Mo’s Fajitas and Wichita’s dynamic push, among other crazies like her at the Aruba Tourism Authority, who decided to seek a more demanding, more discerning client, and up the bar on our general performance and creativity.
Site came to Aruba again in 2009, and Ed Malone conjured up with a tent, which he pitched outside the then Radisson Aruba Resort & Casino, on Palm Beach. But that’s another story, for another occasion.
According to ATA, group business makes up 20% of the island’s tourism revenue today. Thank you Wichita.
So how does she do it? She travels around the globe meeting the people who will deliver the people, and this week in Aruba she got 30 of her best clients together for a spectacular celebration program also including an educational seminar with the students of UA. She’s always big on education! And BIG on giving back, and basically big on everything, long term relationship, especially.
At an elegantly decorated Renaissance Convention Center ECO DMS celebrated three decades of great work with many touching and entertaining moments.
The food was truly delicious, the entertainment fun, and ECO DMS managing director Maoreen Every, Wichita’s daughter, staged some fantastic surprises along the way. Wichita required a full box of Kleenex to deal with the flood of emotion they evoked. Good job Maoreen.
Here’s for the next 30 years.
