 And welcome back to our discussion with Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Chastney. We're discussing the Year and Review 2019. Tourism, St. Lucia has had an unprecedented year of success in this highly competitive global industry. We experienced a 7% increase in arrivals over 2018 and our stayover arrivals for 2019, so like in the region of 400,000, so again unprecedented for us. So we'll take a look now at some of the highlights in that sector and we'll come back to expound on some of those points. Throughout 2019 St. Lucia's tourism industry experienced record highs in old areas. From arrivals, stayover and cruise to airlift, product development and investment. An unprecedented 1.3 million visitors came to the island short, 400,000 was stayovers, representing a 7.1% increase over 2018, solidifying St. Lucia as one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in the eastern Caribbean. Essential to the sector's growth is airlift. American Airlines in 2019 expanded services to St. Lucia, introducing a non-stop American Airlines flight from Chicago on December 21. Up until November 2019, American Airlines had provided 100,000 seats to destination St. Lucia, representing 43% of the seating capacity out of the United States. The cruise sector also recorded successes following the expansion of birthing facilities at Point Seraphine that enables the accommodation of vista, quantum and freedom class vessels. On November 15, with a capacity of 1,800 passengers and over 750 crew, the MV Morella Explorer II made its inaugural call in podcastries. The senior marketing manager, the St. Lucia Tourism Authority, was among officials who welcomed the vessel. Efforts at improving the island's tourism product and heightening the visitor experience continued in 2019. You would have seen the renovation of the market preparatory stage, which has already commenced. You would have seen the relocation of the vendors. We would have trained about 200 vendors to be part of this new initiative that we're doing to ensure that we can advance greater economic penetration in the sector. Meantime, the OECS Regional Tourism Competitiveness Project is undertaking the pedestrianization of the William Peter Boulevard of a side improvement programme for existing small businesses and the upgrading of sidewalks. The St. Lucia Summer Festival season as the 2019 Jazz Festival returned to form. A collaboration with the Lincoln Centre of New York featured prolific jazz musicians from the home front, the region and international. On the hills of the St. Lucia Jazz Festival, St. Lucia Carnival came to life in July, attracting increased participation from St. Lucia's and visitors. In fact, there was a 13% increase in tourist arrivals for the month over July 2018. St. Lucia's demand in the tourism market was underpinned with a prestigious title of world's leading honeymoon destination for a record 11th time. The announcement was made on November 28th at the 26th annual gala ceremony of the World Travel Awards in Oman. The winning streak continued with the Minister for Tourism being named the Caribbean Tourism Minister of the Year by the Caribbean Travel Awards. Honourable Dominique Fede was described as having stood at the destination that is one of the hottest in the Caribbean and has become a haven for high-profile investment. Glittering Sands Beach Park located at Toulanger on October 15 became the newest addition to the tourism product. Owned and operated by St. Lucia's, the facility employs more than 20 persons from the constituency of Ancelere Can-Bries. The Beach Park welcomed the first group of over 50 cruise ship guests for a fantastic day in paradise. St. Lucia's talents were showcased at Carifesta 14 held in Trinidad and Tobago. The offering was a mix of theatre, music, literary arts, performance poetry, traditional performances, visual arts, craft and fashion. The performances included a showcase of our laurels, first of all, and a theatrical performance of a little folk tale written by Monique O'Keeves and Jesse Myers and directed by artistic director, Junior Fedrick. The world celebrated along the island as it commemorated 40 years of independence. His Royal Highness Prince Charles made an official visit to St. Lucia. A special ceremony was held in view fought in his honour. Above all, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me particular pride that St. Lucia today is such a vital member of our Commonwealth family, which binds together 2.4 billion of us across 53 countries on 6 continents through our shared experience and common values. And the physical embodiment of our talent and creativity now stands at the castries' waterfront. Master sculptor Jalim Yudovic produced a statue that captures the essence of Bane's inclusion. This is your sculpture, St. Lucia, from Grosene to Barbono, from castries to Denry, from Miku to Viewfort, from La Rue to Choselle, from Souffre to Canaries, from Anselare back to Castries. This sculpture is symbolic of how far we've come and where we want to go. A look there at some of the highlights of 2019 in this area of tourism and we did include culture in there because the two are sesame intermix. Now, for the government, your aim is to increase GDP contributions to a staggering $1.9 billion by 2022. The hope also is to attract investments of $3.5 billion also by 2022 and to create over 4,000 jobs in the tourism sector. Some people may say a bit ambitious. Look, we've developed a master plan for tourism which includes a branding position as well as a strategic plan on how to diversify the tourism product. We're not only looking at larger hotels and higher end hotels but also very excited about our village tourism program to be able to help solutions to be able to get more involved in the market. The Sandy Beach project, Anselsab, is probably one of my favorite projects ever. It's funny because when Sir John was alive and before anything had been built on the causeway at Pigeon Island, the concept that we're using there is what I wanted him to use on Pigeon Island, which basically would be to not allow development on the beach but have like some kind of boardwalk that would separate the hotels from the beach and then create a village and so subdivide it and allow smaller properties to be able to prosper and to create something that's much more culturally relevant to what your destination is. People are looking for more authentic vacations. Clearly there are people who like to go to all-incluses and bigger all-incluses and there are people who like the uniqueness of a jade mountain or a sugar beach but there are more and more people who want to go to intimate inns and go to places where they don't get to see what they get back home and so it's how do you create an environment to nurture that culture of yours and Sandy Beach is exactly that so a new road will be built along the fence of the airport going into the View Fort Town where Bank of Nova Scotia is. The land between the concrete road going back to the city of View Fort will be subdivided. Water, sewage, electricity being put in, a building ordinance we put in, special incentives and so it means a solution now can buy 10,000 square feet of land. Water, electricity and sewage is already there. You don't have to borrow the money for all of that. Have special incentives and then now there's a development around them and that is much easier for them to be able to sell. With the cruise ship port coming into View Fort for home porting pre and post days means that people could now go and stay in Sandy Beach. The goal is to have an access of a thousand rooms in that location. We also know that there is development of smaller properties around the island so we're creating a new entity called Village Tourism Incorporated. Which of course Ansleray, Grozely and Souffre are the lead communities or villages right now. So will Village Tourism Incorporated and Village Tourism are part of a same circle but they're not exactly the same projects. So the projects in Ansleray, Grozely and Souffre about building the physical infrastructure to support it. So if I want to have a small guest house now in Souffre downtown Souffre, it's become more feasible. I can go to the Hummingbird Beach to go for the day to the beach. The square is there and we're now redeveloping the waterfront and it's now in a very attractive town. The goal is now to build up on the restaurants and create a water taxi service. So people from Anshasne or from Sugar Beach now can take a water taxi and come into town and walk around town and go to these small restaurants in that particular. It's to do the same thing in Ansleray. I think it would be very difficult for a small guest house to survive in Ansleray with the same with the current standards you would see there. Grozely has done a better job but there's still improvements that have to be done in the Grozely town, i.e. the beach facilities, the drains, clearing up in proper ordinances, building back up the older building so that it continues the character of the village. So physically there will be village tourism but the company we're creating is called Village Tourism Incorporated. So what happens is if I want to be able to get into the tourism business, let's say I worked at the hotel as a front desk manager or I was a reservations manager or a food and beverage manager, I want to open up a restaurant, I go in, I am tested by the group in terms of what are my deficiencies are and if you're opening up a small guest house we will give you the accounting system, we will give you the booking system, we will give you the marketing tools, we will provide the training for your line staff and for your middle management on a regular basis, we'll give you advice on your interior decorating. We will now help you source your towels and your sheets and your soaps and so starting to create a minimum standard. So there are Europeans and other people who want to come to St. Lucia for two, three weeks and stay at different properties so that those properties have to be relatively same in terms of standard. I mean Switzerland and Austria have been doing this for years. France this is one of the oldest types of tourism and it's my favorite type of tourism ever is Village Tourism. That's why my family when I had a choice of building a hotel I built it in Rodney Bay, not on the beach. Built it off the beach because that's the confidence I have in that kind of product but unfortunately Rodney Bay is still not of standard to make Village Tourism be able to work and this is what we want to be able to do. It to be successful and sustainable your local population must be involved, must be benefiting and then when you bring it to a scale the likelihood of a smaller restaurant and a smaller restaurant buying food from the farmers and buying products from all the other suppliers is much greater than when you're a bigger hotel you have economies of scale and therefore you can bring it in from abroad much easier. So the goal is really to make sure that we have a balance in what we're doing from a tourism perspective and building up the rooms and making the economic impact we think is necessary. So part of the part of the plan for product development has to do with castries the beautification of castries included in that is the rehabilitation of the castries market. So that plan people are looking forward to a timeline because we've seen bumper to bumper a traffic now with the crews the passengers are coming in. So where are we at with timeline regarding that? So the redevelopment of the castries market the plan has already been completed and I really want to congratulate Mr. Poyot I mean he is really a gem in this country in terms of you know he did the Derrick Walcott home he did the the square in Souffre, many buildings around St. Lucia you know it was his inspiration and really he's a for me a cultural icon and a person I have a tremendous amount of respect for. So the plan has already been done we've started with the place where the vendors go in the back so a new roof new resurfacing they're now about to do the bathrooms they're putting in now next to where the the marketing board is to put in a container a container park for selective smaller shops then we will start developing the interior of the building including the old building itself. So the goal here is to create an atmosphere that small restaurants can thrive that vendors now start becoming franchisees so what I want to see is I want to see the vendors become franchisees to the arts and craft segment here so people who are producing pots people who are producing baskets these young people in terms of costumes and natural soap products so the idea is that they would help the vendor design their stall help them design their uniform teach them how to sell their product and also provide them with a price spectrum so now you're not going to see that every vendor selling the exact same thing and that they're going to be able to add value and so a tourist walking around is going to be able to smell see and hear and taste solution you know my vendors who are on Jeremy Street right now nobody's got a blender and mixing fresh juices this is the kind of stuff that we need to start seeing and that's what's going to happen at the castries market and that you're going to have a variety of standards so basic products all the way to arts and paintings in the air small restaurants so a tourist going in can get the flavors of Saint Lucia me looking for a restaurant to eat in Saint Lucia I can go there it's almost like being in a bazaar so when we went to Burroughs market in London this is what we're really sampling behind and I have to tell you ecstatic about what we're going to be doing there followed by the demolishing of the pantry I'd like to think the parliament but the parliament probably be on hold for temporarily and then the courthouse but the ultimate goal this constitution park will be a park so when I'm standing at the castries market and I look back I'm going to see the cathedral which now is going to connect us to the Derrick Walcott Square now again just also gets in the face left yes how can you have a person and name a park after Derrick and it looks the way it does a cultural icon of this country both in all forms of the arts where do I see that in that place and normally when you have iconic parks you will see restaurants and activity around it where is it a car park around it so the goal is to really change that the customs building sheds four and five start clearing out the place so that now that those become pedestrian ears and you allow the out of the city to be able to breathe moving the container port now the cul-de-sac getting we want to be able to put a convention center and now newer older buildings in the location CDC's we're looking to demolish those buildings but we want to make sure that we have a place to relocate people before we do that that will become now the new government center so you'll have your high court you have your prime minister's office you have parliament you have now certain government buildings that are going to be in that location and so there's this character and I want to be able to walk through castries we're talking about Ben An's I love Ben An's you know nobody's talking about removing the people from Ben An's but we're talking about improving the quality of facilities getting the dock going back again and you talked about congestion so why not have it from point serif and we have a little ferry that carries the passengers that want to go on tour to the south take them to the Ben An's all the buses are waiting for them there now you don't have all those buses going through what I call the gauntlet move the taxis that are currently by Plas Karanaj still have them on the inside but they go and collect their bus down by sheds four and five so when they're leaving they're leaving in front of this last building so again you're not congesting the town so these are all obvious decisions but for some reason everybody's scared to pull the trigger on these things and that's what I'm very excited about we've spent the year redoing the plans because when I made the pronouncements everybody said oh there was no consultation but I think people forgot the fact that there was an intensive consultation in 2007 and 2008 but guess what went back to the process met with everybody again and pretty much the same plans but do you think that not pulling the trigger really has to do with the cost that is attached so all what you have described there it sounds all wonderful it's great but how do we pay for it so we have cut a deal with the cruise industry to allow them to manage both our castries port and our view for port that's the mo you that we signed with world caribbean and carnival they're in fact bringing down with them accompanied it to review our plans finesse them in whatever way that they think it's going to be possible so we've borrowed 13 million u.s. dollars to do the redevelopment of the castries market which is part of the loan agreement that we have of the time when these government we are spending our own money to demolish the existing buildings and to put in the proper parks and then when the cruise industry comes in they're prepared to also bring cash to the to the table so they've agreed to look at their tax structure and we've looked at our tax structure in terms of of having a tax on that will help now pay for these these different developments that we're going to do it we're meeting with the EU and also cdb about the infrastructure that's required in castries sewage we know that water is leaking putting in better utilities how we're going to deal with the surface waters how we're going to expand some of the roads and create now the whole new traffic network so again by accessing development funds to be able to do that so it's still going to cost us money but at least it's on a more concessional basis we believe the return comes in by bringing more business to town 430 castries is dead okay we have a private sector investment that's going to go into point serif and we're going to build a merit courtyard we're hoping to begin and break ground break ground very soon we've got a plan for redeveloping the shops they're horrible and and the fact is that it can't have a facility on prime land like that that's only there for the cruise industry i want to see point serif and being used seven days a week all the time by locus and visitors like you know as well as the tourism industry is doing and the plans that you've just um outlined there sound really good and then asked about how we pay for it you spoke about looking at the tax regime and so forth the hotel accommodation tax or fee if you want to use if that's a more dumbed-down word uh it has been announced that it's being introduced and it's not something off the cuff we've heard about it being in the in the pipeline for a while now but there is that public concern that really and truly you're sort of overburdening the one sector that is keeping st luccia afloat so sadly i could have rewritten the article st luccia is the first country in the caribbean to reduce the vat rate on tourism but then you're saying that you're taking away but you're also undercutting so so the point that's i'm saying that's why i said you i could rewrite the story and say to you that st luccia is reducing the vat rate on tourism from 10 to 7 percent and then applying a fee correct so it's a it's what we call a revenue neutral tax so the purpose of doing what we're doing is in order to allow the monies to be collected directly off of the of the the uh tourist and it's a user fee of st luccia right so they're paying if they're staying at a smaller property three dollars per person per night if they're staying at a larger property six dollars per person per night okay that money is going directly into the tourism authority so that means the tourism authority is no longer dependent on the tourism budget so the 35 or 40 million a year that we're putting into the tourism authority that stops by being now a separate entity like slasper because that's how slasper makes this money off of taxes and revenues that is generating at the port both of the airport and at the seaport it means it has its own budget has its own board because there's too many restrictions to it when it's operating within the government context i mean you remember me when i was director of tourism absolutely when i was minister of tourism constantly complaining that the cash flow of money all of a sudden when you're doing well is when government cuts back on the revenue and that you fight in cabinet every day because people see this as money that could go to health care or education or infrastructure which all need but the fact is is that investing and doing marketing is an investment a brand is a value so the better known your brand is the better it helps bananas the better it helps our rums better helps you when you travel and that people know where solution is okay there's that's an asset value to the state that we continue to be able to invest in and that's why we say the solutions you know when we're committing crime or we do things against the tourists what we're doing is we're undermining our own brand because those are the stories that are going to be remembered out there so i don't want people to think that they should do it for tourism do it for yourself do it for brand st lucha let's be known as one of the best places to live the best places to invest that's the story that we want outside there so the changes that we've made are to facilitate making that happen and so therefore there will be no increase in the cost of coming to st lucha but structurally now we've made it much more efficient in order for the monies to go into the tourism authority and for the tourism authority now to be able to spend the money the deal that i did with the cruise with the hoteliers is very simple there were deficiencies in the old st lucha tourist board too much money was being spent on overheads too much money was being spent on events okay which they were understanding what the value to the branding was so we've structured that we've taken events out we put some restrictions in how much money can be spent on an administrative basis and to make sure that there is greater efficiency and more accountability and building our brand but now people are concerned that what's happening to the tourism industry is that now st lucha becomes a more expensive destination i just said that's not the case so if you reduce the vat rate but you put it back on as a form of a head tax your revenue neutral so that's what we're saying is that the cost of coming to st lucha hasn't been has not been affected would not be affected at all pending projects in the tourism industry you did speak about the sandy beach project during the budget you did indicate that we would be having no more less than five or so projects so where we are with that are we still so on stream cap it which is a new golf course hotel and real estate project is broken ground so they're doing 90 rooms and 18 who golf course and 300 real estate lots i'm extremely saddened over the sandals project to be honest with you now that's a project that should have started and actually would have been coming to completion right now it would have added almost 400 new suites to st lucha on a piece of land that is only air marked for tourism development it's the piece of land that's lies between sandals grand and the landings sadly the landings decided to challenge the dca in their decision they lost the the first case and they've decided to appeal and the developer basically is holding off because he feels is too large of an investment to take that risk it was a very difficult position for me because i really want to let all my investors in my country know that this is a good place to invest and we follow the rule of law so that would have that's a significant delay and we would have already been feeling the economic benefit and the momentum from that happening but i'm still hoping that that project is going to is that the only stalled project because you did mention that the hilton yep so what so so what happened well not hilton we had hilton going in at rex and we were plans were completed everything when hilton first which was at rex and we were very advanced and then the rex people decided to do a partnership with sunwing with the same people who were doing the world in not only on the sun lucha product but on all of their developments around the island the country so granada tobago and antigen particular so it means you have to go back to the drawing board um my understanding is they're pretty far advanced in their concepts they're looking at i think it's a planet hollywood to go where the building was demolished because they had gone as far as to demolish the building uh they're rebranding the old world solution into mystique or mystique i think mystique um and then they're also going to be developing a new branded property where papia is uh so that is supposed to be starting later this year we then have the hiate project which is going to go in shock so there's an 800 room property 400 rooms all inclusive 400 rooms e p with also major conference facilities you have the marriott courtyard that's coming here at point seraphine uh you have the uh sabbushah project which now is going to be a park hiate so originally that was going to be a fairmont and there was new owners that came in um and have taken over that property so we're hoping that that's going to get started very soon the uh people at dsh are developing um their first hotel which will be right next to the site what's exciting is that hotel is also going to be a university um with luzan university which is phenomenal means you're talking about the best um uh hospitality university in the world and solutions will be given access to that university on a very affordable basis but once you become a graduate of luzan you can get a job anywhere anywhere in the world we have like 30 seconds left we have canals which is the honeymoon beach this weekend this weekend uh january 15th we're breaking ground uh so very exciting times and there are other things but i want to wait until they're more advanced before we announce we've now concluded our second hour with prime minister the honorable adam chastney as we look back at some of the events of 2019