Most Caribbean coun­tries are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on their tourism in­dus­tries to keep their economies bouyant, and it is for this rea­son a re­li­able re­gion­al air­line is need­ed.

In a one and one in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, St Lu­cia’s Min­is­ter for In­vest­ment, Tourism and Cre­ative In­dus­tries Dr Ernest Hi­laire said an­oth­er Lee­ward Is­lands Air Trans­port (LI­AT) is need­ed to fly re­gion­al skies once again.

“LI­AT is part of the re­gion­al land­scape. Now that does not say LI­AT does not have prob­lems or any­thing like that, but the air­line is need­ed.

“In fact, for every­one who crit­i­cised the re­gion­al car­ri­er, what would they pay to have the air­line op­er­at­ing once again?

“We need LI­AT and our gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing any ef­fort in cre­at­ing re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. A re­gion­al so­lu­tion is need­ed,” Hi­laire said.

Hi­laire not­ed that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments need to treat re­gion­al trav­el as a strate­gic im­per­a­tive, as when the go­ing gets tough for the pri­vate sec­tor, with­in the air­line in­dus­try, it tends to fold up.

He high­light­ed that a re­gion­al so­lu­tion is need­ed soon as the re­gion­al mar­ket is St Lu­cia’s largest rev­enue con­trib­u­tor.

Asked if gov­ern­ments were com­ing to­geth­er to deal with this is­sue in­stead of just talk­ing on the mat­ter ever so of­ten, Hi­laire said the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) Prime Min­is­ters have met a few times and formed a work­ing group to bring about a so­lu­tion to­geth­er with the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank.

Not a bumper va­ca­tion

Hi­laire al­so high­light­ed that few­er seats were avail­able to St Lu­cia, for the Ju­ly/Au­gust/ Sep­tem­ber as air­lines in­di­cat­ed they had to ser­vice oth­er coun­tries since the re­open­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“The in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines are say­ing we ei­ther do not have planes or we don’t have crew. Few air­lines have both, be­cause dur­ing COVID they sold their planes and did not re­cer­ti­fy crew mem­bers. In most Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, there has been a de­cline of seats com­pared to 2019. So due to this our num­bers, would be slight­ly mod­er­at­ed,” the min­is­ter re­vealed.

An­oth­er is­sue that is hurt­ing the is­land and oth­er coun­tries is the high air­fare.

“We con­tin­ue to li­aise with the air­lines on how we can bring down the high air­fares. One in­ter­na­tion­al air­line in­di­cat­ed that it would not be de­creas­ing any­time soon as peo­ple are still trav­el­ing. While we un­der­stand that the air­line in­dus­try was se­vere­ly hit by the pan­dem­ic, high air­fares must be looked at,” the min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged.

How­ev­er, Hi­laire said, the for­ward book­ings for the win­ter and the first quar­ter of 2024 look very strong and he is hop­ful that St Lu­cia will re­cov­er up to 95 per cent of 2019 ar­rivals.

On the top­ic of the St Lu­cia Jazz and Arts Fes­ti­val, which was held in May, Hi­laire out­lined that it was a re­sound­ing suc­cess in terms of at­ten­dance and vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

While he could not pro­vide the en­tire rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from the fes­ti­val, Hi­laire stat­ed that tick­et sales for the week­end were over US$2m.

The min­is­ter went on to say that while the rel­e­vant bod­ies are still tal­ly­ing the fi­nal num­bers from their Car­ni­val which end­ed two weeks ago, he said it was big­ger than last year and he ex­pects next year to be even bet­ter.

Strong re­la­tions

with T&T

The re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries con­tin­ue to be strong and Hi­laire said the flights com­ing out of T&T are a ma­jor tourist source for St Lu­cia.

“T&T is prob­a­bly our strongest busi­ness part­ner, as there are a lot of Trinidad in­vest­ments in St Lu­cia. We need to have more flights to Trinidad, be­cause the more flights we have, the more move­ment of peo­ple that would take place. We missed more flights for our Car­ni­val, as we did not have as many Trinida­di­ans, as we prob­a­bly would have had in the past,” he ex­pressed.

Ac­cord­ing to Hi­laire Saint Lu­cia closed off 2022 on a high note, es­pe­cial­ly for the tourism sec­tor, which re­bound­ed strong­ly af­ter two years of lock­down.

“The num­bers looked very good, and De­cem­ber was even bet­ter than we ex­pect­ed, and the im­por­tant as­pect now is to keep it sus­tain­able even when a cri­sis hits,” the tourism min­is­ter said.

In that re­gard he shared that the is­land will be de­vel­op­ing a new Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act (TDA), that is ex­pect­ed to trans­form the pol­i­cy and leg­isla­tive frame­work, to as­sist in mak­ing the in­dus­try more re­silient and for Lu­cians to buy in­to the au­then­tic prod­uct of the is­land to sell to tourists.

Fur­ther, he said the Com­mu­ni­ty Tourism Agency (CTA) was launched last year and will aid com­mu­ni­ties in build­ing on ex­ist­ing prod­ucts and mar­ket strengths.

“The Com­mu­ni­ty Tourism Agency will al­so serve to ed­u­cate and as­sist na­tion­als to own, earn and thrive as en­tre­pre­neurs or em­ploy­ees of a tourism prod­uct. This presents St Lu­cia with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vance its goals of an in­clu­sive tourism sec­tor, con­tribut­ing to the eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of the des­ti­na­tion.”

The min­is­ter said that a loan grant has been set up for in­di­vid­u­als and one-third is giv­en for them to pro­duce the au­then­tic St Lu­cia ex­pe­ri­ence.

He not­ed that Saint Lu­cia has al­so launched an is­land-wide pro­gramme called the Kabawé Krawl (Kabawé means “Rum Shop”).

This in­vites vis­i­tors to en­joy a trail of bars, ex­pe­ri­ence the is­land’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty and maybe even swap sto­ries with lo­cals along the way.

As it per­tains to mar­ket­ing, events, and fes­ti­val pro­mo­tion, the min­is­ter said rough­ly around US$20 mil­lion is put aside.

With the grow­ing de­mand to vis­it St Lu­cia, he di­vulged that six in­ter­na­tion­al brand-name ho­tels will start con­struc­tion on the is­land by the end of 2024, so this will great­ly as­sist in room­stock on the is­land.

He said San­dals Hal­cy­on Beach Re­sort and San­dals Re­gency La Toc al­so have ex­pand­ed their suite of­fer­ings.

“I can tell you, in the next year or two, you will see a dra­mat­ic in­crease in the of­fer­ings we have,” Hi­laire re­marked.  

Crime

St Lu­cia, just like oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, has seen an in­crease in mur­ders and crime this year.

The homi­cide rate jumped from a to­tal of 30 in 2016, to 60 in 2017, 74 in 2021, 76 in 2022, and to date 27 so far for 2023.

Hi­laire said ear­ly March this year, the gov­ern­ment re­quest­ed the sup­port of the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) to quell an es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in a south­ern town.

He added that de­creas­ing the crime and vi­o­lence rate is of ut­most im­por­tance.