 The Ministry of Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture and Information in collaboration with the St. Lucia Tourism Authority held an award ceremony in recognition of award-winning ancillary service providers and the recently held 28th Annual World Travel Awards. Chairman of the St. Lucia Tourism Authority, SLTA, Thaddeus Antoine, highlighted the importance of recognizing the hard work and dedication of tourism industry workers as they contribute significantly to the industry. He explained that the SLTA remains committed to its mandate, working with all stakeholders to realize a vibrant and sustainable tourism sector in St. Lucia. On behalf of the World Travel Awards, as we this evening bestow this honor on all your awardees, we at the Tourism Authority are committed to fulfilling the mandate or creating a strong demand for St. Lucia in the global marketplace and to stimulate sustainable development. In doing so, we continue to work with the Ministry of Tourism in terms of the policy coming out of the government and continue to work with you, the partners out there to make it happen. As I said earlier, it's all about you. We are here to facilitate you. We are here to market the country and create a demand that you could now generate business from for the betterment of the country. Minister for Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture and Information Honorable Dr. Eunice Hillay congratulated the ancillary service providers for their achievements. He noted that this type of recognition is beneficial to St. Lucia as it offers increased marketability. The Minister challenged the awardees to set the bar even higher. Within the Ministry of Tourism and the Tourism Authority, we are discussing constantly how we can be better at what we do. We know a lot of hard work has been put in the past by yourselves and other administrators, but we cannot become complacent. We cannot assume that we've arrived because we've won a few awards. We need to set higher standards of achievements for ourselves. We need to challenge ourselves to be even better every single time. As we strive for that excellence, we really want to call on all the stakeholders, all of you, to join us as we chad the way forward where St. Lucia can be even better recognized. And internally, we've spoken about how we want to now be among the top four dive, the diving sector. How can we now not just be number one for romance tourism, but number one in the diving sector? How can we make our village tourism program a project that has been started and worked on for the last few years to become a signature project and become a reference project for world tourism, that if you want to see a best practice in how to set up a village or community tourism project, you go to St. Lucia. When we start talking about sustainable tourism and creating sustainable livelihoods, you go to St. Lucia to see the best examples of that. The award is included 50 car rental, leading car rental company, Marigold Resort Spa and Marina, Leading Beach Resort, Rebel Hotel by Hotel Chocolat, Leading Hotel, Sandals Grand St. Lucia, Leading Resort, Barefoot Holiday St. Lucia Limited, Leading Destination Management Company, Spice Travel and Tours, Leading Tour Operator, and Going Places Travel, Leading Travel Agency. St. Lucia also secured the title of Caribbean Leading Honeymoon Destination for the eighth consecutive year and the 12th time overall. SLTS Marketing Manager for Caribbean and Events Christopher Gustav offered words of encouragement to the awardees. When you win, we all win. Continue to demonstrate service excellence across the industry and we hope that tonight's event will continue to encourage you and other service providers to strive for excellence. You continue to put St. Lucia on the world's map, and for that we are truly grateful. Being recognized as a Caribbean category leader, it would be remiss of me not to say thank you again to our service providers and professionals for your contribution to the Carbocation brand, which is laser focused on our Caribbean brothers and sisters. So I say to you in closing, go on, continue to shine. St. Lucia is still in the running for the title of world Leading Honeymoon Destination. The winner of this category will be announced on the 26th of November 2021. The World Travel Awards was established in 1993 to acknowledge, reward, and celebrate excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries. From the Government Information Service, I am General Norvel.