Page 25 - AHATA

A warm welcome to our keynote of today CEO of the Curacao Tourism Board (CTB), Mr. Paul
Pennicook, distinguished members of the VBC, members of our business community,

special guests, family and friends,….

Welcome to our traditional year-end lunch event.

Today marks to be our 45th VBC luncheon event. An event that has proven to be well
attended by our members and the business community in general. And we thank you for
your continued patronage.
We are proud to still be around, and that after all these years of serving our members we

also realize that we ourselves need to evolve to stay fresh and current …but we all know
that change is not easy … so our organization is also undergoing some changes.

We want to be, but still have to become the association that our members are proud of
being a part of. An association that promotes and supports the business sector in general,
but also be supportive and at the same time the critical voice of the various sectors towards
our policy-makers and other stakeholders.

These changes do not happen overnight but with small steps and by creating and
celebrating all small successes we can change together and change how the community

perceives us.

Some changes we are undergoing are:
• Today we introduce to the public our fresh new VBC logo,
• Our new website will be launched soon,
• We introduced a new executive board structure,
• Working toward modernizing our articles of incorporation to
become more accessible to new sectors and members ….
• We have started talks with other business sector associations for them to also join,

• Recently some new members joined our board, Mr. Herman Behr, representing the CIFA
stepped down and was replaced by Mr. Eric de Vries also representing the CIFA. We thank
Mr. Behr for his many years of VBC committed support as a member butalso as a board
member. And we welcome Mr. de Vries.
• Also Mr. Vinod Daswani, representing the Indian Business Community, stepped down
from our board and is replaced by Mr. Jack Mirpuri. We thank Mr. Daswani for his
contributions to the VBC and we welcome Mr. Mirpuri.

This year we are happy that we are doing this event together with one of our longtime
members, the Curacao Hospitality and Tourism Association (the CHATA).

Mr. Miles Mercera the CEO of CHATA will also say some welcome words shortly, so please
bare with me just a few …

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