Local Tourism Under Threat

The writing on the wall is as clear as it could ever be. It says that no more should St. Lucia’s tourism executives think in the same way and handle the business of tourism in the usual fashion, as it is now evident that expensive jet fuel, rising airline fares and reduced flights that are now everyday occurrences, could spell disaster for the local tourism industry.
And we all know that tourism is St. Lucia’s leading export, its main product, its number one foreign earner. Should tourism here be dealt a severe economic blow then the St. Lucian economy would indeed suffer, to the extent that jobs would be lost, Government revenues would be reduced, Government projects and services would be affected from lack of monies, etc., etc.
And that’s not all, what about the millions upon millions of dollars of tourism investments in St. Lucia? What would become of those investments if they cannot produce the turn over profits that would be needed to keep them in business and keep the overall tourism product in the country afloat?
With the aforementioned factors threatening to drill a major hole in the tourism product it behoves those that are in charge of the country’s main foreigner earner to think not just outside the proverbial box but, as our Tourism Minister said earlier this week in Washington D.C. to an audience of high profile people of the region and its diaspora, make “a quantum leap in its (their) business practices in order to adapt to challenges faced from a stalled US economy, skyrocketing global oil prices and a struggling airline industry.”
Presently the situation in St. Lucia is not yet bad as visitor arrivals seem to be holding steady, even registering double digit growth in North American visitors. But signs of worry are beginning to show as airlines cut back as people balk at paying airline tickets that continue to go up.

The continued spike in oil prices on the world market has revealed how vulnerable the local tourism industry is, its fragility and how necessary it is for those who handle it to be more than business savvy but more to the point, tourism savvy.
Survival of the local tourism product should now be the top priority of the Ministry of Tourism, the St. Lucia Tourist Board, the Hotel and Tourism Association and others who in one way or another benefit from the industry, be they primary beneficiaries or secondary.
That St. Lucia will still be affordable to the wealthy traveler is a surety but not all tourism investments have that special something the wealthy wants. While most tourist investments on the island tailor to all and sundry, to all who can pay the prices, those investments still try to attract persons who are either price-sensitive or are within a certain economic scale so as to have year round occupancy.
Local tourism executives will have to show that as fears mount here and in the region should more airlines cut back on flights, they are resourceful enough to devise ways and means of luring visitors to our shores.
They should forever be reminded of the words of Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet who in Washington said that a quantum leap represents radically changing forever and nothing less than a total departure from the old way of doing things.
And there is no reason why local tourism executives should fail in their task of luring visitors to St. Lucia and keeping the tourism product healthy because they have at the helm one of the foremost minds on tourism in the region, if not the world, the man himself – Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet.
The St. Lucian public would expect nothing less than the best from the current crop of tourism executives as they prepare themselves to respond to the challenges pressing down on the island’s tourism product and causing jitters among investors.