 If I can just say to all solutions, I wish them a happy independence, 45th Independence anniversary. I know all these celebrations have begun. Very important time in our calendar for us to remember who we are and what our independence is all about. So I'm very happy to see some of the celebrations that are taking place. I have to say that I'm extremely happy to see that the events are taking place in Souffre. I think that the work that's been done in Souffre over the last couple of years have prepared it extremely well to facilitate hosting independence. And in particular, I have to say on Sunday, I think it is, I'm looking forward to the track and field event that's going to be taking place. I think that the stadium is unbelievable. I think that people are going to enjoy themselves and I think it's going to be spectacular. The only disappointment, Minister, the member from Grossly, is that it still has not been certified. And if you need any help in getting that certification, I'm happy to have that conversation with you to show you how to do it. Sorry. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm looking forward to the day that we can actually come to this house on certain disciplines, certain areas of development. I think foreign affairs, I've said, is one. I definitely think foreign direct investment is another and tourism very much applies to that. That in order for Saint Lucia to succeed globally and for everybody in Saint Lucia to benefit from tourism, it is going to require both administrations pushing the needle forward. I think that the TSA, the satellite accounting system report that was done in 2016 was very revealing. And it's said at that point, and for those who don't know what the TSA is, the satellite accounting system goes beyond arrivals of tourism. And it gets into the indirect impact. So, when we see our GDP and we see that transportation contributes eight or 10% towards our GDP, what percentage of transportation is tourism? So, our taxi drivers, the persons who are providing shuttle buses for staff, the transportation of goods. So, the satellite accounting system actually goes into some of those elements and shows what percentage of their total amount is attributable to tourism. So, for instance, the Minister of Tourism, the member from Castres South, gave a number, 130 million, if I'm not mistaken, for services. Electricity, water sewage, I assume, and telecommunications. So, again, in the GDP numbers, that would be a macro number. But when you break it out, and I've always said in the area of Loosalek, one-third of the consumption of Loosalek's or production is consumed by the hotel sector. But almost 55% of what's paid comes from the tourism sector because the productive sector pays a much higher price than households do in electricity. I say that, and I make the argument, I think that your presentation would have been even more meaningful. That if you recognized what you were building on, and it has been a collective effort over the years to be able to make this thing work. It seems that the highlight of what we're talking about is inclusiveness. Very, very, very important. Very important. And this is, again, not to tout me, but to hopefully get an appreciation of how long Alan Shastain has been thinking about village tourism. It wasn't something that just inspired me. It goes back to when I was the director of tourism in St. Lucia and the program that we have of Let's Be the Best. And Let's Be the Best wasn't about just the tourism workers, was recognizing that every single person in St. Lucia plays a role in tourism. Every single person. Gas station attendant, going to the post office, government services. I mean, in those days, we laugh at it now that persons who are coming here to get married, imagine, would take almost six days to get all the certificates that you had to get married in St. Lucia. And when we made the amendment that allowed persons to pre-apply and therefore only had to reside on the destination for three days before they could get married, what a significant shift that that was. And these persons used to go down to the police headquarters to get fingerprinted. Imagine that experience, right? And we did it all, oh, we have to do this thing the right way. People can't just come and get married here. You have to go through a right process. And it was not until we adopted the idea that we were competing against everybody else in the world for honeymoon and for weddings. And relies on other destinations were making it much easier for people to be able to get married. That's all the processes that are so important. I remember getting into a very big discussion with Sir John. May he rest in peace. Over the causeway, I was not a supporter of putting big hotels on the causeway. What I felt was we should have had a road away from the beach and that we should have subdivided it and made it much more accessible for locals to be able to buy into it. Very similar to what we've been talking about at Sandy Beach. And again, when we speak about Sandy Beach, it's not on the beach. It's not that the concrete road would become a causeway. We would not allow any development on the beach but we're going to subdivide. We're going to put in the roads. We're going to put in the water. We're going to put in the electricity. We're going to put in smaller lots that will allow locals to be able to have access to this industry because the lack of equity comes from the high price tag to build a proper hotel room. It's not somebody saying that I don't want locals to be involved. The question is, how do we as a government lower that bar to make it using your terminology making the industry more inclusive? You make it more inclusive because you make it more affordable. And you have a dilemma. Small hotels have a horrible track record in this country. And as a result of that, many banks don't even want to lend them money. When they do lend them money it's because they know the person and they use other assets that that person has but not the hotel asset. And I can go through a litany of solutions who have tried and failed and have gone bankrupt and have lost their assets. What have we learnt from all of those things? How do we resolve that problem? And that's why Village Tourism came into play not just from a physical infrastructural perspective but a component that seems to be missing here is the incubator as it when persons want to open up a small property that they have to apply to become a member of Village Tourism Incorporated and Village Tourism Incorporated will hold their hand in getting the incentives. Village Tourism will provide them with the accounting software. Village Tourism will provide them with the marketing platform, the internet platform. Village Tourism will provide them with the training so if I am part of a Hilton brand as an example we get access globally to training. Sandals has become an international brand itself it is constantly training. A small property of two beds is never going to be able to afford to do that by themselves. So how do we bring those services so we can lift them up? There is no point in saying the standard is up here because we know that's where it needs to be internationally they can't do it by themselves. So it's the same way you say well the trickle down theory doesn't work 100% right, trickle down theory does not work by itself but in economies like ours that are not developed what you need to do is you need to grow the economy to create the opportunity for things to trickle down at the same time you have to give a hand to help push up so that people can access what is trickling down to and that is what Village Tourism was attempting to be able to do. When I left here as a director of tourism I went to work for a gentleman called Chris Blackwell who had a company called Island Outpost and Island Outpost was the first boutique hotel company in the Caribbean and the first one globally was a guy called Ian Schrager so Chris and Ian were the two guys that were leading the world in Village Tourism and the first place I went to work when I joined him was South Beach now South Beach was an amazing development which came about after the Depression and imagine when you go to South Beach today which is from 1st Street all the way to 16th Street Collins two or three streets behind it was all built in almost two and a half years all the Art Deco style they had agreed to a design theme which was Art Deco and all these small properties sadly over the years it went bad in fact South Beach used to be called God's Waiting Room because a lot of the elderly used to go there and then it became famous for Scarface but all of a sudden in the 90s there was a revival and what was difficult is that going to Miami in the mid 90s was not a place that people wanted to go to because of the level of crime and we had to carve out a brand niche for South Beach which became extremely successful we had properties in the Bahamas we had properties in Jamaica the first property we opened up in Jamaica was a property called Strawberry Hill which is overlooking Kingston 3500 feet up in fact it's where Barb Marley went after he got shot Irish town no beach you had to fly into the most dangerous city and then in North America which was Kingston and you had to drive over two and a half hours Jake's and Treasure Beach which were all these small properties but had significant brand value after I left working for Chris I went to work for Air Jamaica and then when I came home to San Lucia I had a choice of two places to build a hotel because I wanted to build a hotel I built a hotel much to your surprise and all these claims of no building or no hotel so could have built the hotel at shock on the beach or I could have built the hotel in Rodney Bay off of the beach and the person who came up with Rodney Bay Village was me the Prime Minister the time was the Minister of Tourism and I remember our first meeting at his office and when we spoke about bringing tourism to Marsha and I remember him saying to me don't talk to me about Naked Virgin because that's not the tourism I'm talking about I said no that's not I said but every day you have tourism in Marsha he said no I don't I said yes you do I said if you go to the hotels back then I found out how many of the workers lived in Marsha the vast majority did and what you just described that sandals did in San Susi is what they should have been doing all the way back in the 90s because there's a saying if your workers are happy they're going to become better workers and they have to be happy at home so help improve the environment around their homes all of these things were discussed all of these things were known and all of these things were very clear objectives from way back then so don't come and try to pretend that you're producing something that is new something that's refreshing all we have not done is that we have not committed ourselves to it and make it happen even faster now Mr. Speaker even myself I'll get there don't worry don't worry don't worry don't worry we'll get there you know Mr. Speaker yes Mr. Speaker blah blah blah you know Mr. Speaker there's a a simple rule in tourism that once you have appreciation for it it really helps you define the urgency and the need for the cost of doing business the fact is Mr. Speaker is that in order to bring tourists to St. Lucia as shocking as it may sound is the first thing that you need is a hotel room if there is no hotel room if there's no Airbnb there's no tour doesn't matter how much airlift you put on doesn't matter how many attractions you put on the singularly most important thing to start tourism so don't tell me it's the only important thing to start tourism where it starts the chicken or the egg is the hotel room the capacity to bring people is simply measured by the amount of accommodation you have in your country the question is how much does it cost to build a hotel room how much does it cost to operate a hotel room so 40 cents kilowatt hour for electricity over 22 dollars a gallon for water airfare to come to St. Lucia is one of the highest not our fault I'm blaming it on anybody it's just a fact and the reality the only way that we can lower the cost of airfare in our country is by bringing more people you have to have enough capacity where you can get diversity in your airlift meaning that you have more than one airline coming in and that you can get more than one flight a day from your key cities because when you are restricted then your airfare goes up so there is a threshold we always used to think that that threshold was 5000 hotel rooms but that 5000 only applies to one market if you're going to be like St. Lucia diversified in different markets then it means that you have to have more than 5000 hotel rooms and there is a need now to move in that direction but Mr. Speaker the member speaks of a premise the premise of this bill and really what I see this bill as is house tidying up taking some existing bills merging them together and then putting some spice in it of what a flavor that they wanted to see come out of this bill but the first premise that the member said was to grow the economy well what I see in this document and what I heard from the minister we're not going to grow we're not going to grow not the simple thing of saying that you're only going to give a 50% tax incentive Mr. Speaker countries out there that are giving land unlimited times on tax incentives are providing labor cheaper than we are providing airfare cheaper than we are providing electricity cheaper than we are the incentives are reflection on our high cost don't go and drink the Kool-Aid of what's the famous term that they have for gone revenue as I said if you do not have a hotel room how much money is generated so there's no arrivals there's no money the moment a person arrives we start collecting money Mr. Speaker the moment the first set of money we collect is the $100 of the airport we're then collecting money from all the jobs on the people in the consumption we're collecting money from the taxi driver who pays duties for his car and who's paying well an extraordinary high amount for gas right now I have no idea what the excise tax is but I'm sure it's way in excess of $4 given what the world market on fuel is right now all of that is tax revenue that's being generated when the people arrive at the hotel the security, the check-in the people who are preparing the room the food the farmers who have to sell the food the transportation to get there the transportation to bring the staff it is a gift that keeps given but that giving is directly correlated to the number of people are staying in our country one, two, how long they're staying and three how much are they spending I know that many of us are still novices in tourism when we go around banting about how many arrivals we have by itself is a meaningless number completely meaningless right now in this year Mrs. Speaker we have a situation where the US arrivals and UK arrivals which are the number one revenue contributors to the country are down but the Canadian market and the Caribbean market which were extremely down have increased so it shows that the numbers of arrivals might be up but the economic impact of tourism has gone down and if we're not going to be honest of ourselves as to how we're going to measure tourism and how tourism creates an impact in our country we're going to be in trouble Mr. Speaker sand and sea that has been lost for a long time that is the 70s and 80s many destinations including commercial ones like the Domingo Republic and even Mexico have diversified away from sand and sea and are creating world class attractions golf secondary home horse racing absolutely polo question it goes around so the reality is Mr. Speaker is sports is one of the elements but sports by itself is a solution to the of all-inclusive really if you don't even understand how all-inclusives came about why did they come about because of value how are you going to show people that they can come to San Lucia and going to an all-inclusive is a waste of time it's where you have great restaurants and you have great things for them to do that would be their preference but you have to be able to sell that product because it's the all-inclusive and the greatest competitor in a good way but the greatest competitor to all-inclusives today is the biggest all-inclusive which is the cruise we've lost out there's no way that shopping is going to exist at a higher level go and check for yourself and go and see the top brands Cartier, Rolex, Vacheron and Costanti have all left San Lucia and it's going to happen in many other destinations it's better on the ship people are feeling more secure about buying it from the ship and on the ship so it means that the urgency that we have to move to diversify and provide products that the ships cannot provide which is the attractions and the experiences authentic experiences we need to beef those things up and that's what Village Tourism has always been about and I would certainly like to see the government when they espouse the word they use community tourism but actually put it into practice it's when you make those investments that is how you're going to grow when you can cause more solutions to open up Airbnbs when you can cause more solutions to get into the small hotels the idea is that you're never going to be able to not have bigger hotels because the bigger hotels Mr. Speaker the bigger hotels Mr. Speaker are what going to drive the airlift to the destination can't replace it because of the density of what they're providing so everybody needs everybody this idea that tourism is in competition with farming, agriculture nonsense the more hotel rooms you have the more bananas and more products you can sell if you don't have those products to sell you only have yourself to blame you have to get to the standard you have to help the farmers to be able to provide those products on a year round basis what are those products and that's why Mr. Speaker that we moved very quickly to develop what's called Brand Solution what's Brand Solution Brand Solution is to take into consideration all of the entities in Solution who promote Solution and to make sure they're on the same page so that's export Solution bananas cocoa rum just to name a few CIP but pretty soon the way the CIP is going and the reputation is gaining it may actually be more of a detriment to us and how it's being marketed all of these companies and invest Solution and Slasper have to work together because they're all spending money out there having Solution we don't have enough critical expenditure to create a brand that's strong enough each one of those entities so that's why the logo that everybody is wearing applies to all of those entities and on the packaging of our food products so that we can benefit the more tourists we bring into Solution the greater opportunity there is for our export products the Corona bear has become the number one selling bear in the world and the United States why? there's 44 million Americans that visit Mexico a year tequila used to be on the lowest level of liquor today it's on one of the highest levels and you have tequila companies being sold for billions of dollars because of the synergy between tourism and that is something that we have to work on very very deliberately and with earnest you talk about airlift I was just reading and I really gave me a chuckle that the ministry was celebrating I guess that's the chairman celebrating a new connection to France so I've already opened up the thing that's fantastic because we're working to try to get it guess what it is you just lie to Martin and you come across on the ferry to Solution so you have to leave the airport go down to get the ferry to come here and I know that the minister obviously has not done any of this because if he personally I encourage him to do that go on the ferry and see how the passengers are treated here and I take blame I physically went down there and tried to get the situation resolved and we could not give it I had not figured out that happened later with the minister so all of a sudden that's a connection that's what we're going to go out and market if that is how low your standard is and you believe that you're going to compete on that product we're in trouble if you want to compete in Europe we need many more hotel rooms we have to have a very proactive Airbnb program and that they can be consolidated into a set of rooms because the two operators are not going to want to go and license each individual one somebody is going to have to do that so there's a lot of work that we have to do because Europe is vertically integrated the airline is owned by the two operator who owns the travel agency who owns the hotel so until you get one of those hotels in there like what Jamaica did with the Spanish chains and even with that look how long it's taking Jamaica to develop that European market I want to speak specifically of Souffre because a member from Souffre brought it up Airbnb in new development what is going to make Airbnb in new development work it's the new roads and sidewalks that we put in that is what's going to raise the level and make every part of Souffre accessible to tourism because the way it was being done before it couldn't work even the idea of Hummingbird Beach the members on the opposite side when they were in government between 2011 to 2016 the same Mr. Dalso sorry I don't want to mention anybody's name I apologize the former representative of Souffre couldn't even get that the concession stands not on just on the beach all the way down what now the stadium is going to do in terms of sports what the stadium can do in terms of entertainment and this weekend is a classic example and I'm going to say to the minister the member from Souffre from Souffre from Souffre, François Jack the copper factory is a golden opportunity to create an authentic shopping mall where people can be producing products that are made in solution and can become a very unique experience it is a huge opportunity and will significantly change the lives of people there and so we can raise by bringing a hotel there by fixing up the drain fixing up sidewalks repainting the place why you already have hotels in the area we don't want it to be just a fish fry one night a week and it's to help improve not change the ownership but improve the quality of the restaurants improve the quality of the experience that people have the same thing in Rosalie castries castries market it should be the number one attraction in Saint Lucia where you can go and experience authentic Saint Lucia the vast majority of products that the vendors are selling are imported even down to a t-shirt the slogan on the t-shirt is imported and that's what we were trying to change that's what village tourism is all about creating all of the services around to help strengthen the tourism product when you put musical festivals on and you're bringing international artists and paying them a million US dollars you're leaving behind your local artist denry segment is a unique sound that can be developed all over and when we talk about village tourism we speak about people like the Lamontines and Fondue world class who took our architecture took our shadow houses and put it on a cocoa plantation not on a beach hummingbird beach and she suffers because of the noise and what's taken on but yet she's trying to provide a unique experience how do we make and create an environment that everybody can coexist and everybody recognizes by hummingbird being successful Fondue being successful Anshasthi everybody being successful and the air bean bees being successful everyone wins because the more people that they have the more opportunity there is to be able to make money View Fort spoke about Sandy Beach about putting the infant inside I couldn't get it to register in my head that he's coming here okay you want to change the name I get that that's the typical thing community tourism but even if you believe in community tourism you ought to have supported what's taking place in Sandy Beach because that is the greatest opportunity to allow solutions DSH didn't have it not Sandy Beach bring it no problem and we'll have the conversation you can call me you can say the DSH is saying alright invest solution in fact the billboards were up there as investment solution yes no problem bring them yes bring them bring them you know what Mr. Speaker I'm so tired of members on the opposite side the member over there wants to make allegations about my wife I deliberately didn't stand up if you have any document with my wife's signature on it bring it to the house stop threatening and speaking half truth half truth go and present it I'll be happy to sit down Sandy Beach development the land that was on the other side of the causeway nothing to do with going on the beach the billboards were up there at both ends being done by investment solution you know because you stopped it you decided that that wasn't a good idea so Mr. Speaker the member now speaks about incentives they have repealed the two incentive ads nowhere nowhere in the document other than what he said indicates what the criteria for incentives are there's no schedule no nothing so you've taken away what existed before that said if you put in 20 rooms you're going to get X number of tax holiday nothing what it says is is that there's a committee that's going to be formed that's going to review it and make a recommendation to the minister to be then endorsed by and I'm sorry Mr. Speaker that's not good enough that's not transparency and it makes it worse yet who the minister is and his one track record that's not something that we should be promoting an incentive act that is very deliberate on what you can invest and what you can expect to get and just expect you're going to put an application in through a hole you don't even know who it is and whether you're going to get and now he's telling me because he's telling us for the first time that the limit is going to be 50% good luck with that Sanusha is not going to be able to compete I can tell you right now that's going to be rejected by the market because you said something that's the most important thing that you've said but I want you to follow through with it you said tourism is an export it's an export that means that we have to react to what the market says you have to have an incredibly strong product even Dubai Dubai couldn't go out in the 90s and sell what they had to do they had to reinvent themselves they had to reinvent themselves they had to attract people they had to resource to do that so exactly what the prime minister said previously is we're going to have to depend on PPPs public sector private partnerships and here it is the government was working with the SAH and the PPPs and all the opposition can do was to criticize and today today I hear the minister of tourism speak a language I didn't know that he understood but I'm so happy he does to understand the importance of Kabat they understand if he ever gets his act together as to what the SAH would bring but I'm also saddened by some of the transactions that have taken place Mr. Speaker GPH being one of them the Banans land being another one of them but Mr. Speaker the levy the levy system is set up you want to now get hoteliers who have not applied for incentives to pay as part of the incentive and 99% of those persons are very very small properties so I think to go and ask them to be collecting the levy I think is the mistake we learned it the hard way because it was originally included and we had to back out of it and after talking to everyone but I'm also going to say to you this idea that you may have of expanding the levy to be attractions take that out of your head because you double taxing the levy is what a tourist pays tourist day he rides at a hotel he pays his levy every single day who do you think is going on the tour the same person the same person is going to go on the attractions so what you're going to charge them now the levy twice that's what you said you said it's going to be expanded not now but in the future that's where you're going to go that everybody is going to pay okay Mr. Speaker so you're going to get the tourist are you paying the airport tax of $100 sorry? they pay the airport tax and they also then pay the levy they were paying the levy it used to be called tax accommodation tax which was a percentage and that's the fundamental change that was made Minister in order to make it easier for us to collect the money as to do it as an absolute amount than trying to calculate selling their room rate at hard to figure out what that rate is hard so Mr. Speaker I find it that there are parts of this that are very good I like the idea of consolidating our business I think that the ideas of some of the committees that have been formed are good ideas but I think that they are too too empowered so Mr. Speaker a hotel license we've argued about this forever the staff remember the many discussions that we had about the license what is the license the license is the accumulation of all the other licenses health and safety the fire certification DCA approval okay all these individual licenses make up the hotel license so what are you going to do now you're going to bring all those services back into the ministry and replicate it should be the job of the ministry to collect the information and ascertain that those persons do have the certification in all those particular areas that's not what it says that's not what it says thank you so Mr. Speaker let's talk about the policy group and it's very important and I'm glad the minister recognized the importance of bringing all the players to the table if we are going to make tourism successful in this country we have to stop thinking that it's the hotelier that's the main player the hotelier only makes up part of the overall product only part the ministry of agriculture plays a part the ministry of labor plays a part the ministry of health plays a part the ministry of national security plays a part the ministry of agriculture and manufacturing services every single one of those entities is tourism the problem that we've had is that we don't talk at the same time on the same subject and that's why marketing was separated I mean the idea of developing niche markets that should be coming market driven and once it comes from the market then now it's how you're going to implement it but the thing that's going to come the other way around you're going to force a niche onto the market doesn't work and so as a destination we still have a lot of work to do I still go around too often and hear people as I said speak about numbers of arrivals that's not taking a jab at anybody that's both administrations that's not a real number when you sit down with the banks and try to figure out from the banks why is it they don't want to lend more money to the sector those are the things the hurdles we have to overcome we have to deal with the cost of doing business in St. Lucia and understand what the market wants if you want to get rid of all inclusives then it means that the environment particularly yours, Rosalie and Rodney Bay have to be stand out that when people come to a sand loaves and they go outside to a restaurant they go in an attraction and they go you know what, the next time I come here I can see myself staying here but when the place looks dirty it looks shattered it looks diminished and we don't have a brand everything that we do in this country has to fulfill that brand does our environment meet that brand promise so Mr. Speaker in wrapping up I think that this is a good initial try like my colleague I believe there's a lot of work to be done when we talk about the tourism certificate committee he has the permanent secretary a representative of the St. Lucia Chamber of Commerce a representative of the Bureau of Standards a representative of the St. Lucia Hospitality and Tourism Association a representative ministry of responsible for health what happened to the police what happened to DCA what happened to fire those are the persons that are heavily involved in the certification and what's good about bringing members from our civil service into that environment is they start learning the jargon they start learning the literacy of tourism because I've been to too many meetings with civil servants particularly inland revenue they don't understand the jargon they don't understand how the industry makes they're just focused on collecting X number of dollars and not knowing how it was I remember they used to calculate the occupancy tax because they used sandals of the model so they knew how much they collected from sandals so they divided by two they come up as to what the estimation is not realizing windjammer landing windjammer landing has 7-8 people in one room in a villa 7-8 in a three bedroom villa but that was just one occupancy tax as one room so the per head was much less and so that's why the numbers were constantly off I want to say Mr. Speaker I want to see this industry succeed I really don't care who's getting the credit for it but I'm hoping that we can sit down collectively together and make sure we're not making the same mistakes over and over and over again I believe in village tourism I backed it up by putting my own resources into it and building Cocoa Palm and I've spent 20 years trying to help develop village tourism in Rodney Bay I mean the member from Mikus of New Fort South that was where we disagreed I tried to get it so that the occupancy tax that Cocoa Palm was spending could go into a fund managed by the businesses and the residents so that it was money to fix up the sidewalks and fix up the lights but that never happened but we need to be able to galvanize all of those things don't worry the gas reason has learned nothing about tourism don't worry about it in fact if there's one job I think he would do worse than what he's doing with the roads is in tourism so Mr. Speaker I just want to leave I want to leave Mr. Speaker by first of all again, I'm expressing my prayers and support to the member from Babino I really hope that she has a speedily recovery and again I want to wish all solutions and my constituents a happy and safe independence and I'm really looking forward to the maturity of this bill over time but I think that the minister will get pushback from the industry and he will certainly get pushback from new investment that wants to come into the country and I look forward to hopefully being able to be in the house and those amendments to the house thank you very much Mr. Speaker