 Ministry of Tourism and the St. Lucia Tourism Authority are happy to have the Vacation Rental Association represented here tonight. We are indeed proud to showcase the finest in a journey of discovery of over 400 special gems thrown throughout the island. At this time I invite none other than Mrs. Deepa Ghidhari of the Ministry of Tourism to tell you a little more about our special gems. Over the years the formal accommodation sector has grown significantly through the tremendous support of the Ministry of Tourism by way of incentives and this has been characterized by the growth of all of the all-inclusive properties. The hosting of Cricket World Cup in 2007 provided an opportunity for locals to invest in the accommodation sector through the special sunset legislation in an effort to accommodate the much anticipated stay over rivals for the games. Such a policy position saw an increase in the number of registered small properties opening up for business. Our tourism industry was severely impacted by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic but thanks to some very strategic thinking and the collaborative efforts of the various agencies and ministries a phased reopening approach was used to revive the tourism industry. One such move was the registration of all tourism stakeholders with the Ministry of Tourism and participation in the process of gaining COVID-19 compliance certification. This exercise led to the reality that the number of properties originally thought to have operated will far greater and that they are spread island-wide. Today the Ministry of Tourism has certified 391 small properties for the resumption of business. Such a significant number certainly needed more attention from a policy perspective and as such the need to market the small properties under a brand became evident. We take this opportunity to congratulate the ministry in changing the landscape of tourism through the passing of the Community Tourism Act last week which will provide more opportunities for development of small properties within the communities at galleries, parks, sites and attractions to name a few. The Ministry of Tourism is also pleased to have partnered with the St Lucia Tourism Authority in making the new brand a reality. With the reopening of the tourism industry the Ministry of Tourism saw significant growth in the small properties sub-sector and as such it was felt that these small medium enterprises be branded in an effort to boost image, improve quality and improve sales and arrivals to our shores. The St Lucia Tourism Authority dedicates a significant amount of resources marketing our destination overseas as one which is unique, high quality, value for money and this supports our statement in the St Lucia Tourism Strategy and Action Plan 2020 to 2030 with States. St Lucia will consistently achieve above average growth in high value sustainable tourism. To achieve a high value sustainable tourist destination the Ministry of Tourism plays its rule by ensuring that the product is one of high quality and meets both national and international standards. Our standards for this new brand were developed through the revision of entry requirements developed under the Caribbean Experiences brand which was part of an OAS step program and the CrossQ approved national minimum standards for accommodation. To participate in this new program small properties meaning those with under 35 rooms will be required to be COVID-19 compliant in accordance with the COVID-19 Act number 74 of 2020 and successfully complete an onboard survey which assesses the prospective applicant against the general entry requirements outlined in the St Lucia national standards number 22 of 2012 part one specification for tourist accommodation. These entry requirements include legal and general requirements, physical requirements, general and safety requirements, requirements for public areas and requirements for private areas. Once the successful applicant has made these qualifying criteria the property will be listed into the program and on the St Lucia Tourism Authority's website. It is important to note however that there will be continuous spot checks on the ground to ensure that the information provided in the onboard survey is what obtains. There will be continuous monitoring of participants who register in the program and some of these monitoring mechanisms include guest comments or complaints of the property, its management practices, its services rendered, non-compliance with appropriate licenses and permits to name a few. Where a participate in small property is found in default we will work with that property but in the event that the property fails to make the necessary upgrades it will be delisted. Tourism stakeholders are all too aware of the price to be paid when a company's image is negatively impacted. Therefore, participants will be required to uphold their end by ensuring that their product continuously meets the fully fledged standards set within this program. It is important to note that this is a precursor to the community tourism brand and that our ministry will work with the relevant agencies to encourage further development of locally owned properties thereby encouraging the spirit of getting more visitors to come to the community camp, increasing the visitors experience and distribution of wealth. The Ministry of Tourism therefore looks forward to working with its sister agency and the participants in making this initiative a successful one. I thank you. I'm going to talk a bit about how we came up with the idea, how we conceptualized it, how we see it working, that sort of thing. So Deeper touched a bit on this. How did we identify the need? We spend a lot of time and energy as you know promoting St. Lucia, promoting St. Lucia's properties Deeper mentioned that during the pandemic everything shut down. When the very phased, very careful reopening started, the government made the effort to COVID certify all of the properties. This meant that very quickly we were seeing really large numbers of properties that we were not aware of. They were all COVID certified. At today's count we have 435 COVID certified properties on the island and they're spread throughout the island and most of them are under 35 rooms and the vast majority of them we didn't know about so we were not including in our in our activities. With those numbers becoming apparent it obviously we needed to sit up and take note and start to include these properties. The variety of properties made the effort a difficult one. We're talking about boutique hotels that offer gourmet dining, we're talking about small hotels, we're talking about inns, we're talking about apartments and townhouses and villas and rooms even in people's homes. The range of properties was quite astounding so we felt we had to come up with a concept that was able to meet all of the the needs of all of those types of properties. So we worked very hard on the concept. We leaned very hard on our French friends who are here tonight who will we're all standing in the background there somewhere. We wanted to first of all look at a collection. It was a collection of properties, a very diverse collection of properties and we also thought it would be a good idea or an acceptable idea to lean on St Lucia's French heritage because a very large number of the property names that we were seeing are French and as you know a very large number of the community names are French and it worked well. We found that over 30% of the properties had French names and we liked the idea of the French giving a level of sophistication if you like to the effort. It meant that the higher end properties would be comfortable with that and the more budget properties or the more authentic properties if you like would be pleased to be a part of that as well. So we started to work on the brand. The idea is that all of these properties present a wonderful opportunity to dive into what is an amazing treasure trove of of wonderfulness to try to find a thing that is just right for you. So the word that pops up in the brand which I will introduce to you a bit later is a French word for a small piece of something very precious like a gold nugget and its its exceptional quality is the thing that draws you to it and attracts attention. It's generally something that people are searching for, they search hard for and when they find it it brings them extreme amount of satisfaction and happiness even. It's a journey to find joy and if you find one of these properties that's just right for you this hopefully something that is enchanting to you, it's precious to you for whatever reason it may be that you just want a room because you're here for your Schengen visa at the French Embassy you just want a room there to VG airport or it could be at the other end of the scale where you want an extremely private luxury hotel that offers gourmet dining. These are all very charming properties very distinctive very very varied varied very varied and we believe that they bring you closer to a more authentic experience of St Lucia and finding one is is what will bring you your happiness. So here's a little something that we pulled together for those of you looking for something a little different maybe a little off the beaten track a little more intimate or just right maybe a villa for your multi-generational family vacation to celebrate a big milestone or a romantic cottage nestled in the rainforest with stunning sea views or even a modern townhouse in a gated community in the heart of Rodney Bay or a luxury boutique hotel offering gourmet dining. There are just so many wonderful options to choose from and there's something for everyone find your St Lucia's sweet spot. So we have a very detailed plan in place for for marketing the brand. Of course as we mentioned all of them anyone who wants to be in the program must be under 35 rooms and COVID certified and must go through the onboarding survey that Deepa mentioned. We have established a dedicated landing page on stlucia.org so when you visit stlucia.org you'll be able to see all of the properties on the island as well as select collection to repeat if you are more independent traveler or you're looking looking for something special the properties that have chosen to be a part of the program and have been allowed to join it will be easily accessible and the work that we will be doing will be directing traffic, directing attention to that dedicated landing page. The stlucia.org landing page is very focused on on creating direct sales for properties so what we do is we create a mini landing page for every single property there's a description there's up to 20 photographs there's a map that shows where it is there all the facilities are listed the contact information the website is all there the idea being that if it intrigues you on stlucia.org you don't have to go far and check other places to get all of that information you can check availability from our site you can check rates from our site and you can when you're ready to book which hopefully we will entice you to do you just click through to the booking page of that property we will also be working very closely with our travel partners of course the travel agents because the number of small properties already have relationships with travel agents and that's another avenue for for generating sales we believe that it will dovetail very nicely with the diaspora program that we have planned more to follow on that at some time at some point and the large amount of work that our sales teams do with the travel trade will be expanded to include the the new brand and the new properties the the sales team work one-on-one with a number of our travel partners so that interaction will also include the the the brand we will be running a dedicated campaign during the next financial year which starts in a few weeks time that is dedicated to small properties and this this brand and we also will be including the messaging around that brand in all of the campaigns that we run so if we run niche campaigns romance wellness families you name it the the brand will be a part of that so it's really going to become an underlying part of of what we do our social media will of course include very attractive posts that encourage engagement we have a very high engagement rate on our posts we plan a did you know series where we will get to know the owners and learn their stories potentially learn about the communities and include interesting tidbits about about the communities and the properties and carousel posts which allow us to show because there's so many it would take us as you can see over a year to to to mention every single one of them and the numbers keep growing timothy's here somewhere and he sent me a big long list today to add are you there so carousel posts will allow us to show a number of properties that are similar and talk about them and and that's a challenge that we are very ready for we have a very robust database of contacts and we will in social media posts there's a an ongoing blog the blog will include information visiting media will be encouraged to visit stay at talk about these properties SLTA has a series of newsletters for both consumers and trade of course they will be included in in articles and those and the international teams of SLTA PR in Canada the US the UK will will support the entire effort are already supporting the entire effort so I am very happy to present to you collection de pipit our brand thank you and we have a short video now that we're going to show you that embodies hopefully the soul of the brand your perfect place thank you everyone for this wonderful presentation ladies and gentlemen as you just saw collection do repeat thank you everyone for joining us this evening Colette mentioned to you about our launch today and of course Jorain took you into the process and we also heard from deeper who provided the legislative framework of this program you will wonder why we are launching today and there may have been some holdbacks on launching today but as we speak today on March 16th the global industry is opening up and this is so timely for St Lucia as we adding this new product this new element this new strategy for our global market competition is what drives tourism and competition is what will fuel this program for St Lucia and competition along with our energy along with our zeal along with our dedication to promote St Lucia is what will drive us further into establishing this intensive personal brand that we have launched a call collection though they would repeat so my chairman says and he says he hates acronyms so if anyone comes up today and say CDP please my chair hates acronyms so I would like you to join me and please if you're going to go out and help us sell and market this program and this new brand launch is called collection the repeat please don't use CDP is collection the repeat and we are really happy tonight that we are joined is she around we are also joined by our French representative who came all the way from Martinic today please join me Annie so Annie is instrumental in the brand and Chris is going to speak with Annie later but just wanted to introduce Annie Chris is going to mention her later but it's also as you notice and Collette mentioned about the French influence of the brand because as you know St Lucia also we have our French history and a lot of what sells in the in the global market is your distinction and this distinction about we being having this French heritage this Creole heritage stands us apart from all our competitors and today I'm really proud as to launch and to endorse this program for the global market because as we go into market tomorrow with this program we will be distinctive we'll be different we can offer something unique and the word unique is always used all around the place but you know St Lucia somebody offers a unique experience we are indeed unique the if you see here the teaser from the video shows you why those 400 selection of properties are indeed something special for the market our research has shown us that as we go post COVID into the end pass the pandemic into the endemic the clients from all global markets are looking for something different something special something out of the ordinary so this collection rebranded and coming together as 400 unique properties offers someone who's looking for luxury you're looking for wellness you're looking for chill relaxation you're looking for nothing to do at all you're looking you know you've had two years you you know I hate to say sometimes people are saying I saw in some researches that people are looking for you know I've been bad relationships you know bad family whatever it is I want to come back to something different because I just want some free time to just find myself rediscover myself and be inspired before St Lucia has to offer and I believe that products that we are launching today captures all these elements for the global market so we're really proud and we really want to tell our stakeholders tonight that we will take this to market we do believe that as all whatever is happening in the global market this actually adds some really more depth into St Lucia because it's a way of differentiating us from what everybody else offers we recognize the fact that we do have our other properties and it's not about competing if the other properties but it's actually enhancing the properties and and we we mentioned in the search that once clients are coming to St Lucia they're looking for properties they may know of some of the established brands but also people are also looking for a little bit more and sometimes you are driven and as the video would show you you are driven by St Lucia because St Lucia is aspirational for you but sometimes maybe you say oh this looks lovely this video looks lovely this this villa looks lovely but can I find something can I find a nugget can I find a puppy that is similar can I find this little area in St Lucia that's that's going to draw me a little closer to find myself to revitalize myself to to discover to inspire me to come to St Lucia so we are really really excited tonight that this program will answer all those questions for our travel our travelers and we are also really on the heels of ensuring that our airline partners know about this product so we are also on the heels of expanding even more we were told that some of the areas that we are targeting right now there's a shortage of of airlift so uh the chair of the airlift committee is here this evening as well so the strategy is to ensure that we go out to ensure that we have enough of the rule the s the air seats to encourage those persons whether you're from the caribbean whether you're from the u.s canada uh the uk or europe there will be enough uh seats for you if you choose to come to St Lucia so this is our goal so we're really excited and and with this we just want to say that we will take this to market we have a great strategy for the 400 properties we have registered we hope that anybody else who hasn't registered they become envious I must say to you that the caribbean is looking at us even more now that we are expanding all of those products so so congratulations to the 400 participants who will be registering full pledge into the program we look forward to taking this to market and as of tomorrow it's going to become live we have our website ready and we look forward to sharing and enhancing St Lucia's accommodation capacity with this non-Japanese products so thank you again to all our partners who have joined us this evening thank you for um thank you of course to the direction of the our honorable minister Dr. Hiller for endorsing this part this program and taking it forward as we look forward to to future growth for St Lucia so thank you again and thank everyone for joining us this evening let me express my sincere appreciation to everyone who's turned up here tonight to celebrate the launch and I must admit when I first heard of the products and the name was presented to me I think like most of you I may have had the difficulty in getting the pronunciation right and I had to practice and to make sure that I got it right and I'm still not even sure that I have it right and I must also indicate to you that for me it's a really special occasion to to launch the collection tonight and the reason why is because and I want you to reflect upon it why do we want to have a successful tourism industry in St Lucia of course there'll be individuals who will make money as entrepreneurs investors but there must be a deeper reason why we want to have a successful tourism industry we want a successful tourism industry because we want to create sustainable livelihoods for our people that's essentially what it is all about for other people there'll be other reasons but from a public policy perspective it's about creating sustainable livelihoods for our people but how do you create sustainable livelihoods in an industry such as this first of all your people must accept it secondly your people must participate in it and thirdly your people must own it and if you start reflecting on those three core principles you can start appreciating why this collection is so important because it represents an opportunity for our people to be to participate and to own the tourism industry it cannot be sustainable if our people cannot see their reflection in it and therefore this is what most importantly it offers and I think it has to be sustainable and for it to be sustainable our people must accept it and I will say a few words on this a little later on so when this was first presented to me I did ask for some further reflection on it some further refinement why because it had to fit in this perspective of what we want the tourism industry for and in many ways I believe we've probably reached a point where it fits nicely in our overall thrust in this tourism industry and that is to move away from a predominance of resort based experiences for too long and if you reflect on it our tourism incentives act our legislative framework is really geared towards accommodation and large accommodations the marketing has been geared towards promoting largely not totally on resort based experiences and we needed to start that shift and you would have heard from I think all that earlier on who spoke about the need how it came about but maybe there's something about the coincidence and the beauty of coincidences because that process of certification for COVID that brought forward all those properties that needed support was really showing us a pathway for the future for our tourism industry and by having these properties and marketing them as an experience in St Lucia we've added value to our tourism products and I think it fits in nicely and I'm one who believe that you must always build on the successes of the past you don't always have to come in and believe the past was all bad and you needed to get rid of it you really need to reflect on it and see the value and the strengths of it and how you can refine it and make it fit in what you want to achieve and this fits in nicely only last week launched the community tourism bill well it's now an act and in there is another product this one speaks of finding the right place the community tourism is about finding the right solution authentic experience is really going to focus on how we can sell to the world authentic solution experiences in the various communities the basket weaver the bar the restaurant the accommodation whatever it is that speaks of an authentic solution experience it will fall under the community tourism bill and therefore when you add this you can now understand the range of options solution will be presented so I think this is an excellent addition and for the all the hard work that has been done in the past and presently I think we should applaud every single one that has taken us to this point where we are I am told the first level of support that will be given is for collective marketing to promote it to sell it to the world as a distinctive solution experience a distinct solution brand I think we need to reflect on how we can offer more for this particular collection and to show that it is more than just the marketing the branding we have to be able to give it more support and to ensure its success and I think the team will have to examine further how we can offer more than just branding and marketing of the the collection so as we continue to to examine the tourism industry and how to make it more sustainable and to bring more benefit for our people to create more ownership for our people we've started over the last few days a review of the incentives and concessions framework in St Lucia that is really through two primary legislative instruments we have started reviewing it and some of you have participated in those consultations and I want to encourage you to continue to participate where we can now come up with a tourism development act that broadens the scope for St Lucia to participate in the tourism industry to really move away from the predominance of the accommodation sector and resort experiences to other experiences the dive sectors the transportation sector to make it world-class and to ensure that St Lucia can offer a product that is total that is holistic and and really meets those standards that we speak of so tonight I certainly want to applaud everyone that has worked to make this a success and for hosting us here tonight I want to say a special thank you to our host is a fantastic place that you have here and I'm sure everyone will agree with that so we want to thank you for hosting us tonight the CEO spoke about you know St Lucia is opening up the world is opening up just looking at some of you tonight you can see things have changed you know you can see and I can tell you for some of us now that we have no confinement or curfews it means greater latitude to stay up late at night and so so I even heard today there's an announcement that grossly Friday night will resume you know I can tell you for a fact that we will have carnival this year God willing in July so the world is opening up and there's an urgent out there for people to travel once again to visit places and St Lucia must be ready even before I became minister a lot of hard work had been done to open up St Lucia and to strategically position ourselves we will continue that work will be even greater efforts to make sure that St Lucia is successful in the years to come so thank you very much for being here tonight let's enjoy tonight and let's continue to support the collection of the pepites thank you very much thank you minister and I invite you to remain at the podium we present this certificate to Vacation Rental Association on the commemoration of the official launch of a collection of the pepites dated the 16th day of March 2022 I present to the minister to present to you so thank you to the St Lucia tourism authority of tourism there's so much I can see so I'll try to organize my thoughts so I say it in order you know the Vacation Rental Association was formed in June of 2020 I think what really prompted the the formation of the association was the intention of the government to pass two bills in parliament at the time in that same month I think was a tourism levy act and the St Lucia tourism authority amendment act the amendment act was to enable the SLTA to become a revenue collection agency and of course the tourism levy was introduced to collect of course as it says a levy from various properties operating in the accommodation sector of course there were some components in the bill at the time which robbed many accommodation providers the wrong way I will not go into detail at this time and I think many of you would know and so the bill in its form at the time had to be taken back and reformulated to become more acceptable to operators in the sector now I saw that the collection of pepites speaks to properties in 35 rooms and under which will be surprising to me because I'm thinking of properties five rooms and under and I'm saying this because I think the existing legislation the tourism incentive act speaks to only properties with six rooms and above being able to access incentives so I thought the 45 was a bit out there and I'm saying this also because the majority of our membership which now stands in excess of 250 members representing over a thousand rooms on the island I think the majority would be three rooms or thereabouts where you do have persons owning one room an apartment and so forth and I mentioned some names and if you have not visited these properties as yet please do so we have city oasis in Arundel hill in Marsha a super host which means they have met top quality standards consistently for several months that's Arundel hill in Marsha maybe surprising to some of you we have Michaels place in Balata we have sunny palm villas in Labry refers here tonight so the collection does not also only speak to the luxury properties but quite a range spread out over the entire island admittedly the concentration of properties is in grozily Souffre and Labry but I think with the advent of Communitarianism which the minister spoke to earlier on we would like to see the spread of the accommodation sector throughout the length and breadth of St. Lucia we have some communities that are underserved I think the districts of Dennery Mecode I think Ancelore Canaries because I think they have nuggets in all of those communities that visitors can access certainly in Canaries we have the how you call it is it Kako certainly see I'm not mistaken it's an experience that visitors I mean I haven't done the visit yet I'd love to at some point but each community has its own nugget that visitors can enjoy you so for the last two years I've spent quite a bit of time onboarding a lot of new owners onto the vacation rental ladder and you can see the joy on the face when they get that first booking and when that first booking translates into an actual stay at the property and when that stay translates into a deposit into the bank account via wire transfer it's such a I mean that's all it's such pleasurable experience yeah in addition to what I get from my own properties as well so I'd like to dedicate this plaque to the rest of the board of the vacation rentals association we've worked tirelessly on a volunteer basis to really get the properties on board to get them certified bring up the standards as much as possible and I know there's more work to be done and so this is dedicated to them thank you thank you missy thank you mr leos and just to show our I'm not to use the acronym I remember that chairman our collection that copied properties what the certificate will look like once you have been endorsed into the program this is what your certificate or should we say your accreditation will be so we invite everyone to sign up complete that survey and get on board thank you it's my privilege to have been asked to propose the vote of thanks on this occasion on behalf of the ministry of tourism the sen lusia tourism authority and by extension the sen lusia hospitality and tourism association we are delighted that we are on a new and impactful journey bringing collection the repeat to life special thanks to the product development team at the ministry of tourism who instrumental in shaping this product along with our team at the sen lusia tourism authority true story when we thought of a name we were trying to find one that the fit was just perfect we hit many roadblocks by the by the final name but the final name was the brainchild of our marketing representative for the french west indies miss annie lefroy annie come and share some come and get some love come and get some love yeah annie tonight we see a special thank you for invoking the peace for this piece of our french heritage into the name and for coming all the way from martinik to join us on this special occasion your contribution and presence is tremendously valued special thanks to the management of villa excel for facilitating the use of this venue and i want to tell a little story about the villa the first time i came here was i think last week friday and i was just amazed so i went home and i told my wife babes we have two choices in this life we're gonna either have a work harder or win the lotto whichever one comes first but it really is amazing amazing property and we love the fact that we get a chance to showcase it today i'd like to also special thanks to events and lusia i mean the place looks a bit beautiful the setup immaculate and you know what we know for sure is just a sampling of what you'll have to offer to our specially invited guests our speakers and participating properties in the program your presence helps tonight has signal your commitment to moving a great product forward my colleagues at the slta i want to give them a big thank you you know um everything every time you're developing something new you know it takes a while to to develop and i want to really spotlight our team at the slta for working together and really becoming a family i mean i really trust my team and i know that they have and i know that we have each other's back and i think that's very important in any working environment so i'm gonna give a round of applause for my team for the team i also want to give a special thanks to the st lusia tourism authorities marketing committee who endorse this program a special thanks to mr lios as well you know um i saw he um introduced the program and um he started speaking in creole and i was like maybe i should try that i remember i was raising marsha and bernand and we specialize in only the bad words so thank you for always going above and beyond to ensure that the destination can always be showcased as the creme de la creme of the caribbean and amongst the makers of the international industry let's go out there and boast of our little pots of gold our special gems our collection dpp as we trust that everyone will find a sweet spot in a place that is most special or valuable to them please join us for some refreshments do have a good night and i wish everyone a safe journey home thank you