 Island of St. Lucia is a major attraction for visitors from all over the world throughout the year. And in the days when the tourism product was just maturing, the peak season for visitor arrivals were the winter months in Europe and North America. These were the regions that initially provided the island with its major source markets. However, this is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as the island continues to diversify its tourism product, attracting visitors from many source markets, including the Caribbean, the UK, Europe, the United States, and Canada. In this series, the rebranding of a destination through festivals and events, we explore this side of St. Lucia's tourism product. We also take a look back at the first two events in 2017 under the Soleil Summer Festivals branding. St. Lucia boasts of entering the tourism sector in the late 60s and since then has seen tourism grow to become the island's main economy second one only to the banana industry. Dominic Fede, who is the island's tourism information and broadcasting minister, worked within the island's vital tourism sector prior to becoming a minister. He has observed first-hand some of the progressive changes to the all-important industry. When I came in, people were talking about promoting destinations with sunset and sea and I think that the Caribbean had began realizing that it was guilty of neglecting other parts of the product, so like the adventure that some of the islands have to offer the romance, the wealth of heritage that exists in the various destinations and what we have found now is destinations now having an aggressive aspiration to better brand themselves and promote themselves. So now we're talking about experiential travel and we're showing that research suggests that people are looking for more than a beach, not just now but 25 years ago and so they're looking for a destination where the people are vibrant, where its color is very lively and where its culture is rich and its cuisine is very prominent as part of that product. Part of the product is having a brand to market and sell, so what is brand St. Lucia? Well for a long time we've been simply beautiful St. Lucia and that has worked wonders. I think brand St. Lucia is very strong when you talk to the tour operators and you talk to the trades they see St. Lucia as a destination that is different from the others simply because of a number of different things. It's the only island you can have peaks like the Pitons. The volcano is one of its kind in this part of the world the history of its people extremely friendly rivers coming out to its coast makes it extremely different and interesting and very appealing to the average traveler. Over the years the island has also explored various niche markets including nature heritage, weddings and honeymoons, tours and even health and wellness. However with a people as vibrant as the island itself with a penchant to celebrate at every occasion the island now invites the world to join in on the exhilarating street parties, festivals in the arts heritage and culture as well as other special events. Well the weddings market is almost 15 percent of the total arrivals to the country romance is pretty big and we have made a name for ourselves in the romance business over the last 15 years. We have seen that in about nine years or so we have won the world's leading honeymoon destination including seven consecutive years holding that title and that says a lot about the respect about the expectation of travelers when they're coming to us so we've been pretty strong in romance we can only grow from there but there are other niches as well that we can extract the cultural and the heritage niche the mixture of French and English heritage that we that we have is very very special and we need to continue to leverage that with the African and the colonial past that we have. In 1971 St. Lucia established the very first in Lucia tourist board an entity that has worked well as being St. Lucia's sole tourism marketing and promotions agency over the years. However under the new direction rebranding the destination and consolidating the mandate the island moves in the direction of a tourism authority. The rationale though to answer you more specifically as it pertains to why we're going to the tourism authority has to do with better streamlining the marketing efforts of the destination. So now this year we've had the same 34 million but it's a lot more strategic in this approach it's a lot more potent in terms of what we spend on the core of marketing the destination. We're expected to have an additional 2000 rooms in the next four years and to grow capacity not only do we need more rooms but we've got to also sell the destination. What we've done is that we have worked through tour operators the strategy now is to push the destination front and center of the branding position of the country. So what we are going to focus on prioritize is brand St. Lucia more than anything else more than any one of our partners and we bring our partners on board so that St. Lucia is projected first. A new entity events company of St. Lucia has now been established to manage events which originally fell under the purview of the St. Lucia Tourist Board as well as other entities like the Cultural Development Foundation and the Folk Research Center. The minister responsible for tourism explains this rationale. It took away the responsibility of the big events so for example the jazz festival which consumed a lot of the not just financial resources of the former entity the St. Lucia Tourist Board but it also consumed a lot of the human capital and it sort of distracted them and the organization was less focused as it pertained to its main role and its main role is to market St. Lucia as a tourist destination. So with events in Lucia you brought better expertise you put a lot more efforts into organizing some of your national events. So for example the jazz festival was at a different standard from all of our national cultural showpiece and we're saying that if we can spend as much money to promote a jazz festival and put such an effort in the events management component then we can also do so to some of our indigenous festivals. So like Carnival, Creole Heritage Month. Thomas Leos is the CEO of Events Company of St. Lucia. He explains the mandate of the entity. Events Company of St. Lucia was established to centralize the production of a number of different festivals which were occurring on the island of Somers how many decades ago and of course these festivals were produced by a number of different entities, a number of disparate entities. You had the case of the jazz festival being produced by the St. Lucia Towers Board and the primary mandate of the St. Lucia Towers Board was to market St. Lucia as a brand outside of St. Lucia and not necessarily to produce an event. You also had Carnival being produced by the Cultural Development Foundation. I'm not sure which entity produced it before the CDF and a number of different entities connected to the CDF has been producing Carnival. You had the stakeholders coming to you, the CPMA and so forth. You also had the Arts and Heritage elements of our culture being produced by FRC. But FRC's primary mandate was to research our folk history and present that to the public. So the thinking was to centralize the production of all these festivals into one entity. So you have a similar standard in production and was presented to the public across the range of festivals that were being produced. There was a whole idea and centralizing the production so the quality remains to see this consistency in the production and in the presentation. With the Ministry of Tourism now being the central focus on the economic development of tourism as well as setting policies and guidelines, greater synergies are now created with the Department of Culture and Events Company of St. Lucia as well as the Tourism Authority. The marketing is done by the Tourism Authority and events in Lucia would deal with some of the soft product development which would bring into the mix events management so that they would organize the festival. So when I look at the Solid Music Festival, when I look at the Jazz Festival, the Creole Heritage Month, all of these allow us to go and market a different event, a different component of our culture and to say to the visitor that we are a destination is more than a beach. The Ministry of Culture and Local Government is the ministry to which the events company of St. Lucia reports. Senator the Honourable Fortuna Belarus heads this ministry. One of the major pronouncements by our Prime Minister was that he wanted to see the arts in our culture contribute much in a much greater way to the gross domestic product of St. Lucia. And of course, within St. Lucia we've got a number of major cultural events happening, most of which were underneath the banner of the Cultural Development Foundation. But as we look at it and as we've seen in the research and consultants have also done some work, it was necessary to form an events company that would take care of the production of most of the national events that we have because we believe that these events can assist us in a very meaningful way in terms of attracting more people to our shores and more importantly creating a greater level of consciousness from our people in terms of the economic value that they bring to our country. Events company of St. Lucia is now responsible for producing six festivals under what is known as the Soleil St. Lucia Summer of Festivals. These include a Morshtrim Line St. Lucia Jazz Festival, Roots and Soul Festival, St. Lucia Canaveral, Country and Blues and Arts and Heritage Months. So the thinking being, grouping all of those festivals on the Soleil brand was really to give a sense of confidence to patrons at those festivals or all the respect events that this event is being produced by the events company of St. Lucia and therefore when I go to that event I expect things to be a certain way. So events company on the Soleil is producing jazz, they're producing carnival, they're producing arts and heritage, roots and so what have you. So when I attend I expect security to be at a certain level. I expect the sound system to be at a certain quality. I expect the spectaclone stage to be produced at a certain level. I expect the show to run on time. I expect the change over to take place on time. So that's why branding is important that we know that when I attend an event or festival put on by this entity this is what I should expect all the time. Soleil represents the endless and the abundance of energy that we do have in our region but more importantly it was to find that brand that would really symbolize all the events that we are offering to citizens and also foreigners to our shows during the summer. So the Soleil brand was born as a result of that and of course Soleil meaning energy you understand vitality and of course showcase in what we as a country have to offer throughout the summer period and we believe of course as the events grow as we continue to build the capacity in some of the other events locally for example our La Rose or La Margrete eventually some of these will become part of that package that we sell off to the rest of the world. For the government of Saint Lucia the positive spinoffs from these events are now far reaching no longer is it about filling up hotel rooms during the traditional low tourism period. The idea is to now use these events to market brand Saint Lucia throughout the year so that our people can derive not only the economic benefits but will also be engaged in many of the technical aspects that come with the staging of such world-class events. Well one of the legacies of the jazz festival has been the events management capacity of our country that has certainly risen to higher heights and I think that the economic spinoffs to local business people to small business people has been the story has been told for many years and I think that they will continue to benefit from that. I think you'll see greater patronage from the local community to our various festivals. In terms of the wider economy as well there are a number of services that need to be engaged in putting on a festival. Like I said you have security is very key for those events so the companies are local security companies who hire persons to provide security services in quite large numbers. You have ground transportation so taxi services and the persons we bring in from overseas have to be transported from the the airport to the hotel so the local taxis benefit from that and they have to be transported from the hotel to the performance venue so transportation services benefit in that way. You have caterers because they have to cater to the needs of the artists when they come here so and some of them are very demanding requirements but we don't fly in caterers from outside to do that so it's local locals who benefit from that. Even at the events themselves when patrons attend people will need to eat and drink so the concession is there who usually don't operate on a year-round basis will get an opportunity to make some money at those events. Of course we have local DJs who play a role during the intermission. We have local artists who provide if they are not on the main stage themselves but they may have a side show during the events. We have MCs who also so it's quite a large number of different persons who provide services to ensure the festival is put on at the highest level. So I mean the effect is quite far-reaching into the number of different sectors that are involved in putting on the event. The first event which was staged by the events company of Saint Lucia was the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival, a most streamlined event in 2017 offering jazz purist most straight ahead jazz and world-beat music. The event was held from May 12th to 14th and featured international acts such as Vanessa Williams, Kenny Garrett, Richard Boner and Mandikan Cubano, Malavoie, David Redder, Andy Narell and Rachel Farrell among many others. The festival also saw a number of Saint Lucia acts taking it to the main stage. In 1992 we introduced the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival. 2014 brought us the Saint Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival. Welcome to 2017 the Saint Lucia Soleil Summer Festival. Come let's join me for the jazz components. Sailor, so he took me out and we drove and went up and down the coastline. People have been tremendous and lovely. I had some stew fish this morning which is delicious or soft fish. So you say it's soft fish there. And I'm loving the hospitality and just relaxing on Mother's Day even though this is work it feels like a vacation. The Minister with Responsibility for Tourism Dominic Fede says 2017 was a learning curve for the rebranding and the new direction of the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival. The main function and the main purpose was to promote Saint Lucia as a tourist destination and so we had to now repackage the festival rebrand and bring something fresh to the media market internationally so that we can rekindle that interest and passion about writing about some of Saint Lucia's festivals. The CEO of Events Company of Saint Lucia says that the capacity building and training is also part of the mandate moving forward. They will use quite a large number of persons we've brought in from outside to produce the festivals and I've seen that number dwindle over time and that's because the capacity has been built up locally so the sound system provider doesn't necessarily have to come from overseas anymore. I think about the individuals making significant investments in equipment down here to give you that quality that can rival any festival anywhere in the world. Then you have the question of when the production of the festival will stage management and artist management capacity building taking place in that area when it comes to our concert type productions. In June the second event under the Soleil umbrella, the Roots and Soul Festival was born. The event was staged at the Pigeon Island National Landmark on June 17th and 18th 2017. As we continue on our journey with the newly introduced Soleil Saint Lucia Summer Festival, join me for two days of Roots and Soul. Being Caribbean in a country that embraces us differently you know I mean like there's something there's some sort of something majestic about what we do something exotic that they cling to so I being over there made me embrace that aspect of myself a lot more so the music that I performed tonight that was new was a testament to that. Winter in Saint Lucia which was one of these songs that was you know in a way one of the hardest for me to perform but one of the most important for me. It definitely is an amazing feeling to see that your hard work that you eventually reap what you sow. Sometimes the harvest takes a longer time to get there but when it does it's very very fruitful so I feel amazing. That we featured for Roots and Soul I think about six were local yeah and those were persons who may not have had an opportunity in a typical jazz festival to perform on an international stage but so some names came forth that you would have heard before like a Diana Philip is a case in point, Chrissy Shalma is at a case in point, even Kayo is at a case in point who featured at the Roots and Soul Festival and I think the production that they put on was of international standard but they might not have had an opportunity in the one jazz festival as it was constructed before so by broadening and breaking out the festivals you give more persons who have interest in different musical journals to come forth and really present themselves at that scale. Klaios also believes that the reasoning behind having these events spread throughout the year would result in positive dividends in time. Prior to the formation of the events company and establishment of Soul I brand we had a heavy concentration of well it's a music festival but it was what happened in May and had different genres of music within that festival but it was called a jazz festival nonetheless so what has happened is now it has we have tried to break up the music component of the festivals into different genres so to appeal to different tastes so jazz is now really jazz and that appeals to a certain market in the U.S. which is a big source market for us and also the French Antilles which I think has provided the largest number of visitors for jazz over the years. You might think it may be the U.S. but I think visitors to jazz from Maknik has outstripped every territory significantly over the years so that's a ready market we can tap into for jazz and then we had the carnival they also play a big role in our carnival we had a group visiting from Guadeloupe that took part in our carnival parade so the French territory is a very significant source market for visitors to all those festivals. Lucia grows not only as a destination but one renowned for staging world-class events so too will the opportunities for our artisans and service providers as this 238 square mile island paradise invites the world to share in our culinary experience our music our culture our passion. Of course one of the festivals where that passion and sense of national excitement is very evident is Dream St Lucia's Carnival one of the island's annual major cultural showpieces and this is where the spotlight falls for the second in this series the rebranding of a destination through arts festivals and events as we take a look back at St Lucia's Carnival 2017 and the arts and heritage month with the little blues thrown in between