The world wants to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and the Caribbean zone is slowly coming out of its isolation and lethargy hoping to receive more than 40 million tourists as before the arrival of this coronavirus in March 2020. However, competition is expected to be tough between all the countries of the globe and in particular between the Caribbean islands, most of which are economically devastated. The means imagined to attract visitors are not lacking. For example, some islands of the region have integrated the “Live and work anywhere” scheme in order to seduce teleworkers who also become tourists…
It is too often wrong to believe that only tourist organizations or travel agencies sell Guadeloupe. It is true that they participate in national or international fairs and praise the charms of our destination with the sites to visit, the sports and cultural activities to practice, the culinary dishes to taste or the typical drinks to enjoy. However, it must be admitted that not all travelers visit these fairs due to a lack of time or because they think that the speech they are given is rather formatted. So, they hope for something else that will make them decide to explore a distant land. And, images seen on the internet, especially on YouTube, can help them choose. These images can simply be from a music video clip. They don’t have to know the artist or appreciate the music, but if they do, our culture will have won. While surfing the Net, the web user can watch one of these videos and fall in love with the beauty of the landscape, housing, the living environment, among others.
Our Zouk singers and musicians – most of whom have unfortunately left the archipelago to settle in France, hoping to find great fame there – often return to the country to shoot the videos of their songs. The film crews (directors and technicians) can be composed of locals, be mixed (Guadeloupeans and French) or come entirely from France. These shootings of “mini-films” that are the vidéos also contribute to the development of our economy with, for example, rentals of villas, equipment or hotel rooms, catering etc.
Thanks to the professionalism of the director and the whole team, the video clips accompanying these musical titles are of a very high quality. Among the filming locations, some are very well known but sometimes, the way of filming them makes them even more magnificent and sometimes we also discover images of exceptional and unknown sites… In less than 4 minutes, the video clip that may seem “insignificant” to some people turns out to be a “tourist concentrate” and, published on the powerful network that is the internet, it is able to seduce thousands of tourists across the planet.
Therefore, the promotion of our archipelago is not made only by tourism professionals. It is necessary to take into account the contribution of our artists and especially of our singers and musicians who are cultural ambassadors. Moreover, why not stream a selection of music videos on the stands during international fairs?
We focus our comments on Guadeloupe, a French Caribbean island, but they are valid for all the islands of our region.
