Welcome back to Saint Lucia
An interview on the future of travel with Minister of Tourism Dominic Fedee
Can you provide a bit of an update about how it’s been going since Saint Lucia reopened its borders to international travellers?
We’re very glad that in the first month, we’ve seen about 4,000 people, which is just about 10% of our pre-COVID capacity. There have been very low instances so far of COVID. We’ve seen with other jurisdictions in the Caribbean, they’ve had to open and close their borders.
We’re very happy that in the case of St. Lucia we have consisted, we have been able to stay the course and make sure we sustain our opening. We have four different airlines from the US and London — Delta, JetBlue, American, and then British Airways. So we have pretty good connectivity and are totalling about 27 flights a week.
I think despite the gains we’ve made in technology, the travel agent community will remain very paramount. I always tell people if you have arthritis you go to a specialist, in the same way as well if you want to get the best vacation experience, then you go to a travel specialist and get the advice from them. I believe the role of travel agents will be critical to get independent advice as to what is the best vacation experience that one can take.
Dominic Fedee
What kind of initiatives are in place to make sure that tourism and hospitality industry workers, as well as visitors, stay healthy?
What we’ve got in place: the pre-testing is a big one. You have to have a negative COVID test to come in. Once you do that, we still quarantine our returning nationals. In the hotel it’s very well managed in terms of the protocols, so you would have sanitization machines that are set up in strategic points in the hotel, you would have temperature checks happening at regular intervals on the property. Any sign of a symptom or any sign of you having something that resembles COVID, you get isolated from the rest of the guest population straight away and we do a PCR test to ascertain whether you are safe or you’re not. We’re taking every precaution that is necessary. It’s been different and more challenging for the hotels because the cost of business has gone up, for the travellers, we’ve scaled back the number of attractions that we do. The kinds of attractions that we do are keeping with tranquility, rather than mass tourism type of activities where you find large groups of people in any one area.
Are you confident that these initiatives will work and is it possible to still have a “normal” vacation?
People are still going to the beach, they’re going on tours. They are having three wonderful meals a day in all of the restaurants within the resorts, they’re enjoying all of the amenities at the resort — the spa, people are going diving, so it’s pretty close. The only thing we haven’t done is put back the Friday night Jump Up. I think we’re confident that the protocols are working. So far we’ve only had two cases, and both of those cases have been returning nationals. If I had to measure it exactly one month after, I think that St. Lucia has done pretty good. In terms of our opening, I would say we’ve had a resounding success in how we opened to tourism. I’m looking forward to growing the demand and I hope that this can bolster the confidence in people travelling.
Some people see the proof of negative PCR test upon entry as hindering travel but others believe it provides an added layer of security for travellers… What are your views?
I think we have to do everything now to ensure that everyone is protected. I know that the inconvenience of getting tested and so on, but it’s a rather difficult time, it’s a peculiar time that the world is facing and what we have practically done is we have placed the health and safety of our guests as paramount. That comes over any other aspiration that is commercial or business in nature. What we want to do is make sure our guests and our citizens are safe. From there, that’s the key to the success to reopening tourism. The worst thing that any of us can get right now is an outbreak, we’d have to shut the borders and tones of people would be sick and we don’t want that to happen.
Can you talk about the economic impact of COVID-19 on the island’s tourism industry? What are the forecasts for recovery?
It has totally devastated our entire tourism fabric. All of our hotels were closed down during the peak of COVID when it was hitting the Western part of the world. We have lost some 15,000 jobs that represents about 15% of our workforce. In terms of GDP there are suggestions that we’ve lost about 25% of GDP output and that is quite significant. It’s worth about 1.5 billion in local currency, you can do the division by 2.65 to get the US value. A lot of companies that trade with tourism, they would have seen business fall out significantly. There’s just a whole lot of fallout from the economy. We simply cannot replace, and it’s going to take a long time, for us to come back to pre-COVID levels. We need to find a vaccine really soon so that we can give everyone the confidence that the virus is under control. I think the more countries like Canada sort out their COVID situation, the better off destinations like St. Lucia will be. It’s dependent not only on how well we manage it, it’s also dependent on how well you manage your COVID situation in your country so that we can have the confidence to allow people to travel without any hassle, and to travel without all these protocols, which can be prohibitive.
Let’s get into the Canadian market and it’s growth or significance?
It’s critical. Canada is our third largest market in terms of revenue and arrivals. It continues to be one of the pillars upon which St. Lucia’s tourism industry is built. We love having Canadians. I think that last year we had about 45,000 Canadians, which made up a significant portion of our arrivals. And we look forward to growing that. We’ve got Canadian investment here on island with the Sunwing Group and the Blue Diamond Hotel chain with Royalton Resorts, managing about three different properties here on island. We hope that with this connection we will continue to see more Canadian arrivals and more business from the Canadian market.
Many of our readers are travel agents, what role do you see them playing in the future of travel?
I think despite the gains we’ve made in technology, the travel agent community will remain very paramount. I always tell people if you have arthritis you go to a specialist, in the same way as well if you want to get the best vacation experience, then you go to a travel specialist and get the advice from them. I believe the role of travel agents will be critical to get independent advice as to what is the best vacation experience that one can take. The role of the travel agent community will continue to be important despite the technological gains that we’ve had and the significant role that technology continues to play in bookings. We need the voice of the travel agent. We need more FAM trips at this time so that people can experience the wonderful experiences that we’re creating. It’s really selling that experience to the hundreds of travel agent voices and allowing those voices to take that message to the consumer.
Is there anything you want to add from a CTO perspective?
I think we need to continue to work together as a region. We’ve done everything we have as a region in the Caribbean to have a unique set of protocols, even though it may vary from country to country. But those nuances in our protocols should not be something that is too stark so that customers and operators are confused. What we’ve tried to do is simplify our protocols and to have some uniformity as much as possible. The Caribbean has done a tremendous job by and large in how we have kept our countries relatively safe from COVID. The number of cases are relatively low in most destinations. I think that the Caribbean is going to be one of the first places to rebound in travel.
