2018 Tourism Edition - SLHTA President Takes on Tourism Challenges

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SLHTA President takes on tourism challenges President of the St Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association Karolin Troubetzkoy on building resilience, tourism trends and why Caribbean operators need to work together

Hashtag heaven: inside the world of travel’s top Insta-influencer Jeremy Jauncey’s Instagram is, on the surface, much like so many other aspirational social media “influencer” accounts Page 6

By Catherine Morris, STAR Businessweek Correspondent

Karolin Troubetzkoy may just be the busiest woman in tourism. A veteran of the industry for over 30 years, the St Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association (SLHTA) President has collected an impressive amount of accolades and job titles during her career, and shows no signs of slowing down. In addition to her day job as Executive Director of Marketing and Operations at Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain resorts, Troubetzkoy frequently attends conferences, speaks at events and hosts stakeholder meetings – all in an effort to continue her lifelong work of promoting and supporting both the local and regional tourism sectors.

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Cruise ship revival opens new channels for onboard retail With steaming pots of tea and tiny glossy cakes, iced in distinctive Tiffany blue, high tea on a World Dream cruise liner is now a jewellery sales event.

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Tourism Turbulence: The Pursuit of More Affordable Air Travel FOR Saint Lucia

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By Ed Kennedy, STAR Businessweek Correspondent

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he expense of flights to and from Saint Lucia is something that frustrates most locals, particularly because so many of the issues are a result not of distance or demand, but red tape. The issue of airline red tape is not unique to Saint Lucia, but it is on this island that its impact is highly visible.

With its tourism industry the cornerstone of the national economy, the passage of people to Saint Lucia via air travel will always be a critical consideration in planning for future economic growth.

So why does Saint Lucia have to deal with such expensive airfares? And what could be done to address the problem? Let’s look now in-depth.

Soaring Inefficiency

If the Wright Brothers knew back in 1903 the headaches that would one day come with the commercial airline industry they may have been tempted to keep the Kitty Hawk on the ground for a few more years.

Thanks to airplanes it’s today possible to travel between continents in less than 24 hours. You can circumnavigate the globe with ease on an around-the-world ticket. But when it comes to the relatively straightforward flight from Miami, Florida to Saint Lucia, it’s confirmed for travellers near and far that the airline industry still has a long way to journey.

While prices do vary depending on day and airline, a typical return trip from Miami to Saint Lucia costs north of US$900. This is in stark contrast to a regular flight from New York where round-trip travel from the Big Apple to Saint Lucia’s Hewanorra International Airpoirt can be purchased for around $600, oftentimes well below $400.

And instead of travel time requiring over one day, this flight can typically be done in under 5 hours.

Certainly some allowance needs to be given for the greater population and economic pull of New York compared to the Floridian city. On the other hand, that trip from New York to Saint Lucia is an extra 500 miles, being approximately 2,000 in total compared to Miami’s distance of 1,500 from Saint Lucia. 500 more miles yet far less expense. This factor is among many that point to a

According to the Ministry of Tourism, Saint Lucia welcomed slightly less than 170,000 stay-over visitors from the USA in 2017

problem that is simple to identify: the modern airline industry is broken.

Airlines and Issues

As an industry, airlines commonly have razor-thin profit margins and volatility.

This applies not only to selling tickets, but widely throughout the business.

The rapid up and downs that a typical stock in an airline can produce from one year to the next are commonly accompanied by outdated regulations. Then there are the ‘dirty tricks’ by established carriers in many airports around the world that make it difficult for new carriers to establish themselves on the scene.

The battle of Virgin Airlines founder and Necker Island resident Richard Branson with British Airways in the early 1990s is today seen as a textbook example of such behaviour as the latter sought to put Virgin out of business via a number of underhand methods.

The Reality of Supply and Demand

Alongside the woes of the industry, there’s the reality of simple supply and demand.

Saint Lucia had a terrific year for visitors in 2017, reporting a new record high of over 1.1 million visitors. This great result is testament not simply to those who carried tourists here, but ultimately the great businesses and communities that enticed them to visit.

Despite this terrific achievement, 1.1 million visitors to the island, especially when split among transport from commercial airplane flights to cruise ships and beyond, is a far cry from the 13.4 million trips annually on the world’s busiest air route, from South Korea’s capital of Seoul to the resort island of Jeju off the Korean Peninsula.

While Seoul to Jeju is the leader, all of the top ten busiest air routes in the world see at least over 5 million trips per year.

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As a result, when new airlines do arrive on scene, often they target already established local routes with high traffic, or routes experiencing colossal growth, such as mega cities throughout booming Asian nations.

Despite these challenges, there are avenues for Saint Lucia’s tourism industry to navigate a smooth path in the future.

New Tech and New Connections

Recent years have seen the rise of online price comparison websites across traditional industries. Concert tickets, hotel websites, and travel modes have been common targets among aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to offer a new service to the market.

Unfortunately the highly regulated environment of the airline industry and the thin profit margins of many flights means Continued on page 4

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SLHTA President takes on tourism challenges Continued from page 1

renewables into the grid.”

In the next few months the SLHTA intends to brief members on certification programmes so they can gain formal sustainability credentials and educate themselves on how to better incorporate environmental principles into their operations.

Overcoming challenges

Troubetzkoy recognizes that marketing Saint Lucia in the international marketplace is only half the battle.

Distinguishing the Caribbean region as an epicentre for cultural and geographic diversity, while marketing it as a collection of diverse destinations, will strengthen the region’s appeal and make its tourism product more competitive

Leading the SLHTA

In July this year Troubetzkoy took up the reins of the SLHTA, for the second time.

Her first tenure ran from 2010 to 2016 and highlights included overseeing the development of the SLHTA’s social media platforms and web presence as well as launching the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) which collects a voluntary contribution from tourists and funnels it into community development. In its five years of operation, the TEF has raised more than EC$7.5 million and supported more than 120 projects. These range from helping small tourism operators market their businesses more effectively to reducing youth unemployment through human resource development and helping single parents who work in tourism.

Her first presidency may be a tough act to follow but Troubetzkoy has even bigger goals for her second term at the head of the SLHTA, starting with energising its members. The organisation is currently revamping its communications strategy and mobilising standing committees to encourage

discussion and engagement on topics such as culinary excellence, health and wellness, destination marketing, sustainability and youth development. The latter is particularly important, given the potential of Saint Lucia’s industry to provide long-term employment for the next generation. The country’s tourism sector directly employs more than 14,000 people and indirectly impacts the livelihood of a further 34,000.

“Human capital development and ongoing skills training, operating more sustainably and efficiently, as well as building more awareness about the important contribution of our industry to the economy are all important areas for us to focus on,” says Troubetzkoy.

An important area is sustainability, ensuring that tourism can grow at a pace that doesn’t negatively impact the environment.

Troubetzkoy says this is very much on the agenda for the SLHTA and adds: “We would like to see a breakthrough in plastics reduction, better water and waste management and integration of more

Over the course of her three-decade career, Troubetzkoy has had a front row seat as the Caribbean’s tourism product has waxed and waned. “The region has come a long way since the 80s, providing greater customer service and culinary experiences [but] this does not mean there isn’t a lot left to do,” she says.

The Caribbean has been steadily losing its share of the worldwide tourism market in recent years, falling behind the average global growth rate of 6.7 per cent. In 2017, the region grabbed just 2.3 per cent of the global market. Troubetzkoy says the decline is due to a number of factors including a perceived lack of value. “Visitors that compare a Caribbean vacation with a vacation elsewhere on the globe often rate the value lower. They consider our rates too high for what is offered when compared globally.”

There is still interest in the time-honoured sun, sand and sea product, however, and big name hotel brands such as the Ritz-Carlton and the Four Seasons continue to look to Caribbean islands. While this has brought substantial investment, it also runs the risk of crowding out smaller operators who do not have access to the same resources.

The SLHTA is working closely with these smaller-scale operators to help them compete. Troubetzkoy says: “Pricing a hotel room and making your product competitive is very different if you have thousands of rooms in your portfolio instead of only a handful. This has placed some considerable burden on small hotel operators who have challenges attracting visitors because their offering is not visible enough and their rates may be uncompetitive.”

And then there’s the shared economy. The rise of more cost-effective options, such as Airbnb, for frugal travellers is also making its mark on the tourism landscape. “This has changed the industry dramatically and we still need to work out how to create a fair

playing field for all.”

In terms of local challenges, Troubetzkoy notes that hotels in Reduit, Marigot and Soufriere are concerned about the “high, dangerous and uncontrolled influx of day leisure boats” leading to overcrowding of bays and beaches in those areas. She also highlights unlicensed boat operators, unwanted solicitation on beaches and safety concerns for swimmers as potential problems.

Working together

It may be a bumpy road ahead as the sector navigates its challenges but Troubetzkoy retains her faith in the core values at the heart of Saint Lucia’s industry, saying: “We are blessed to live and work in one of the Caribbean’s, if not the world’s, most spectacularly scenic settings. Add to this our beautiful and welcoming people and a dedicated set of professional operators who understand the importance of maintaining high standards and you have a great foundation on which to build as we further define what makes Saint Lucia such a unique and desirable destination.”

While Saint Lucia may have escaped the devastation from hurricanes Irma and Maria, Troubetzkoy believes the storms should serve as a valuable lesson. “It has become clear that as an industry, and as an island, we must focus our attention on how to become more resilient.

It also became more apparent than ever that the world at large does not yet understand and appreciate the great diversity of our tourism product in the Caribbean region.”

A past president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, Troubetzkoy is always aware of the regional context and sees the work ahead as a shared endeavour. “From the moment I came to Saint Lucia in the early 80s, my interest has always been how I could contribute to the wider industry, both locally and regionally.

“I am proud to be working with other stakeholders across the region to strengthen the education of Caribbean nationals about the importance of sustainable tourism development, as well as to advance efforts not only to promote the Caribbean as a single destination, but also to engender a spirit of togetherness so we are reminded that, when one nation is negatively impacted, it is our shared responsibility to look after one another.”

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DEPARTING: Saint Lucia 7:57 AM | ARRIVING: Miami 10:55 AM DEPARTING: Miami 6:15 PM | ARRIVING: Saint Lucia 10:49 PM

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Tourism Turbulence: The Pursuit of More Affordable Air Travel FOR Saint Lucia Continued from page 2

for identifying avenues to offset the high expense of a tourist’s fare, especially when done in partnership with other providers.

A flight from Saint Lucia to Miami may be expensive, and no traveller dreams of a 24-hour juggernaut with mulitple stops, but if the airline industry sees a gradual yet clear growth in arrivals via cruise ship over airplane, then suddenly those ‘expensive’ flights could face renewed pressure to decrease.

2019: A Crucial Year for SAINt Lucian Travel

In the past five years ending in 2017, Saint Lucia has recorded the following growth rates in its key tourism markets for stay-over arrivals: USA: 46%; Canada: 13%; UK: -4%; France: 28%; Germany -10%

that online start-ups and established airlines often find little common ground.

The widespread popularity of existing airlines and their marketing means that even those who bravely enter this space can find it a hard task to carve out a profitable share. This doesn’t rule out a ‘killer app’ emerging altogether; it just makes smaller

the prospects of one emerging to be a real game changer.

Despite this, though the airline industry may not be disruption-friendly, the tourism industry as a whole is. This has been seen across other areas of it, for example with the rise of Uber and Airbnb. For Saint Lucian tourism providers, a path is here

Press release Six talented young men and women will undergo indepth training in a hospitality and tourism workshop in Taiwan from 12 November 2018 to 22 January 2019. 來自聖露西亞6位優秀青年，將赴臺灣參加為期10周的觀光餐飲服務職 業訓練課程，課程自107年11月12日起至108元月22日止。

At a send-off event on Thursday, 8 November, Ambassador Douglas C. T. Shen of the Taiwan Embassy encouraged them to bring back the latest ideas and skill sets of the tourism industry when they return to Saint Lucia in 3 months. He also thanked the Honourable Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, Minister for External Affairs for making relevant arrangements and her dedication to human capacity building in Saint Lucia. 露國外交部舉辦行前記者會。沈正宗大使致詞鼓勵受訓青年攜回在台灣 學到的觀光餐飲最新知識及技能，同時感謝露國外交部長鮑布蘭對本項 計畫的協助及為了建構人才所做的努力。

With the upgrade of the Hewanorra International Airport, and its projected opening in 2020, the year ahead offers a key opportunity for local efforts to raise new awareness of the impact that expensive airfares have on local tourism.

Airline red tape may not be all undone in 12 calendar months but even the allocation of an extra flight or two per day to Saint Lucia with a reduced rate could have an impact on the bottom line of tourism revenue over the course of a year.

The reality is that the Saint Lucian tourism industry can look to make an array of optimisations and reforms to what it does within the nation’s borders, but the issue of high airline prices remains a bottleneck on profitability.

With a glittering new airport upgrade, and many airlines to observe the opening, there’s never been a better time for a collective push to see prices driven down. Ultimately,

外交部次長 大使祝福受訓青年此行順利，露國觀光部第二部長 及致 詞中期許受訓青年在台研習期間呈現露國最後的一面並作為兩國青年大 使， 她並感謝台灣政府長期以來對培養露國人才之貢獻。

The workshop, organised and sponsored by Taiwan’s aid agency-the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF), is aimed at enhancing the human resources and strengthening the vocational training

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While prices do vary depending on day and airline, a typical return trip from Miami to Saint Lucia costs north of US$900. This is in stark contrast to a regular flight from New York where round-trip travel from the Big Apple to Saint Lucia’s Hewanorra International Airpoirt can be purchased for around $600, oftentimes well below $400. a growth in Saint Lucian tourism is not just good for the local economy, but for airlines too, as more tourists seek more tickets.

Saint Lucia may be playing for the home field here, but in this issue airlines can illafford to be turned away. For local providers seeking to prioritise which mode of travel they look to for their patrons, 2019 offers a great opportunity to push for change.

Six Young Saint Lucians to Participate in Hospitality and Tourism Workshop in Taiwan Best wishes were also given to participants by the Honourable Senator Fortuna Belrose, Minister in the Ministry of Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries, and Ambassador Elma Gene-Isaac, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. Minister Belrose encouraged the participants to be good-will ambassadors by showcasing the good qualities of Saint Lucians during their stay in Taiwan. She also expressed her appreciation for Taiwan’s continual contributions to Saint Lucia’s human capacity building.

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systems in the Caribbean region. Ambassador Shen stressed that the government of Taiwan will continue to help Saint Lucia and other diplomatic allies enhance their human resources. 本訓練計畫由台灣財團法人國際合作發展基金會辦理，旨在協助加勒比 海地區友邦青年培養職業技能。沈大使強調台灣政府將會持續協助友邦 提升強化人力資源發展。

Saint Lucian participants to the workshop include Nadine Shana khodra-JnBaptiste, Veronica Cecilia Felix, Trudy Melba Everiste, Shavonne George Emmanuel, Lisa Paul and Nikkev Randal Louis. 本計畫參訓學員為 Nadine Shana Khodra-JnBaptiste, Veronica Cecilia Felix, Trudy Melba Everiste, Shavonne George Emmanuel, Lisa Paul and Nikkev Randal Louis 六人。

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Island Hopping

Multi-destination tourism is on the rise. To grab its share of this growing market, Caribbean destinations must find ways to collaborate rather than compete

By Catherine Morris, STAR Businessweek Correspondent

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n the aftermath of the devastating 2017 hurricane season, tourism stakeholders in the Caribbean were quick to step up marketing efforts.

Their message was clear - this is a large, diverse region and many destinations are still open for business.

At a time when travellers are increasingly looking for unique experiences, the Caribbean’s size and diversity is a commodity that can be leveraged to attract not just international guests, but those coming from other countries within the region.

Multi-destination tourism refers to visitors who travel from one Caribbean country to another. These may be international islandhoppers who want to see everything the region has to offer or Caribbean natives indulging in a staycation. Tourists seeking out multidestination trips are often young, affluent, adventurous and socially conscious. Rather than relaxing at a resort, they want to engage with the countries they visit and plan a varied itinerary that will add value to their trip.

A growing niche

Last year, travel group Expedia reported a 15 per cent increase in ticket demand for travel from one Caribbean destination to another and noted that this niche is growing three times faster than international inbound travel to the region. The most popular According to research by Expedia Travel Group, non-Caribbean nationals visiting the region are increasingly interested in multi-destination experiences, but the Caribbean has historically been unable to increase island-to-island mobility for tourists and Caribbean nationals alike

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TOUR PRICES CHOCOLATE MAKING US$40.00 PLUS 10% SERVICE CHARGE AND 10% VAT

TREE TO BAR US$65 PLUS 10% SERVICE CHARGE AND 10% VAT

To b o o k y o u r F o n d D o u x C h o c o l a t e H e r i t a g e To u r , p l e a s e c a l l ( 1 7 5 8 ) 4 5 9 7 5 4 5 / 4 8 o r C e l l # 7 1 6 8 8 0 1 .

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Hashtag heaven: inside the world of travel’s top Insta-influencer With millions of followers and a disruptive media business, Jeremy Jauncey could be the world’s most influential traveller

By Simon Usborne, FT Correspondent

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eremy Jauncey’s Instagram is, on the surface, much like so many other aspirational social media “influencer” accounts. There he is, posing with a panda in Chengdu, each animal showing impressive white teeth.

There he is, strolling at sunset through the gardens of Babington House, the members’ club and hotel in Somerset.

And there he is, shirtless in the Austrian Alps, pecs glistening like glaciers.

Jauncey, a Scottish former rugby player who retired in his twenties after injuring his back, has 640,000 followers.

That’s a lot by any measure, but his own account is a secondary concern. In 2012, the year when Facebook bought Instagram for $1bn, Jauncey and his similarly photogenic brother Tom began sharing pictures of nice places. They gave the account a simple name: @ beautifuldestinations. You may well know it; at the time of writing, it has 11.4m followers.

During a trip to London from his base in New York, Jauncey, now 34, meets me at his members’ club on Pall Mall.

He wears a white T-shirt, blue jeans and an expensive watch. He is, as ever, Instagram-ready. But he has become a lot more than the buff itinerant he presents to the casual scroller. Beautiful Destinations (BD) has grown to employ 40 people on “Silicon Alley”, a stretch of Park Avenue humming with tech entrepreneurialism. And it is growing fast. In an ongoing hiring spree, Jauncey has so far poached Remi Carlioz, global

Camel riders traverse the desert in Abu Dhabi — an example of the images shared by the company via Instagram © @beautifuldestinations/Instagram

creative director at sportswear brand Puma, and Brendan Monaghan, former publisher of Condé Nast Traveler — a hire that underlines that contrast in fortunes between this new form of travel media and the old. (Condé Nast Traveler’s own Instagram feed has a more modest 1.7m followers, and it was announced this month that its US and UK editorial teams are to be merged).

As well as sharing nice photos, BD has become a kind of advertising and branding agency. It uses slick video, data and proprietary algorithms (more of which later) to boost digital audiences — particularly on Instagram — for brands including Marriott, Hilton, Shangri-La and various tourism boards.

The extent to which Jauncey’s Instagrammer lifestyle has collided with a more corporate reality is evident at the club, where Jauncey’s newest colleague is taking notes. For five years, Elizabeth Linder led Facebook’s political division in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, advising world leaders on social media.

In May, the American became executive director at BD and is about to open a London office. “I’m responsible for comms and external affairs — so the government outreach piece,” she tells me in unimprovable jargon, adding: “Helping governments understand the role of citizens in the travel space is something we’ll be upskilling them on.”

Today it is Jauncey who is “upskilling” me — on what he sees as a new era for the travel industry in which Instagram’s casual hashtag vanity is going somewhere more calculating and commercial. Since its launch in 2010, Instagram’s most visible impact on the world of travel has been the proliferation of holiday snaps of dubious quality and the rise of “influencers” who request free stuff from hotels and airlines in exchange for a few filtered selfies. But things are changing, and Instagram, which in June hit a billion

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monthly users, boasts of its tightening grip on the travel industry. According to a Facebook-commissioned survey in the US in 2016, 67 per cent of us turn to Instagram for travel inspiration. Brands including Virgin Atlantic, Airbnb and Hostelworld have flocked to the app with ads.

To convince me that BD works beyond the influencer model — or purely advertising — Jauncey is scrolling through its main Instagram feed. “Right, look at this one,” he says. He opens a striking shot of a footbridge over a forested valley in Da Nang, Vietnam. The picture of the bridge, which opened in June and passes through giant concrete hands made to look like ancient stone, has half a million “likes” and hundreds of comments. But like most of the photos on the BD feed, it was shot by someone else. A guy called @smashpop gets a credit at the end of the caption.

The BD feed has become, in large part, a gallery of photos trawled

from the rest of Instagram. Exposure is generally the reward. But such is the new reality of the platform that many of these subsidiary Instagrammers are no longer chancers with iPhones. @smashpop is Jason Goh, a professional photographer in his early thirties who runs his own social media agency in Kuala Lumpur. His Instagram, which has more than 65,000 followers, is home to his lifestyle shots of food, architecture and travel. He tells me he was on holiday in Vietnam with his parents in July. He sent up his drone to get a few shots of the bridge before a security guard told him to delete them. “I obliged but fortunately the original copies are still inside the memory card,” he says.

When Goh posted one of the images to Instagram two days later, his notific­ations came in such a storm that he had to turn off his phone. But it was when Beautiful Destinations asked permission to share it a few days later that things really rocketed.

Requests came in from media organisations all over the world, and Goh gained 23,000 followers in a week.

This is what Beautiful Destinations has managed to perfect: identifying what flies on Instagram and either doing it or finding it, and sharing it with the world’s biggest online travel community (that’s the company’s claim and I could find no travel accounts with a bigger following).

A team at its New York HQ monitors #beautifuldestinations, a hashtag now attached to more than 25m photos, in a search for posts with viral potential, while also calling on a network of more than 200 “ambassadors” — in effect stringers whom BD can mobilise around the world when it needs particular shots for clients (it does pay them for client work).

“What we’re looking at now is this rising creative class of young people who are incredibly talented but don’t fit into a traditional ad agency mould,” Jauncey says.

“And it’s this insight that allows us to go to a country and talk about building their exposure.”

This is where we get to the meat of Beautiful Destinations — and the money.

(Jauncey, who worked in e-commerce after

quitting rugby, declines to talk bottom lines — BD is a private company with no outside investors. But he will reveal that while the Instagram feed is the business’s heart and calling card, 90 per cent of its revenues come from ad campaigns that don’t sit on it). It took 18 months of building the BD network before a travel brand came knocking. Until then, Jauncey says that the industry, from tourism boards down, didn’t really “get” social media, if they bothered with it at all.

In 2014, Dubai and the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah hotel were running a big PR push and realised that they should take social media seriously. Jauncey’s team got to work and hosted a meeting of influencers at the hotel. Locals and visitors began using the #mydubai hashtag to expose lesser-known shots of the city, the best of which were projected on to the Burj’s sail-like exterior. Jauncey says the hotel’s bookings grew 38 per cent during the month of the campaign.

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destinations for guests within the region were the Dominican Republic, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago.

Expedia Group Senior Director of Resorts Rafael de Castillo said: “We’re excited to report overall growth in intra-Caribbean travel. Hoteliers in the Caribbean have a unique opportunity to meet their sales goals by capturing the attention of a growing segment of travellers in their own backyard.”

Recognising the potential of these backyard visitors, Jamaica has taken a proactive approach, signing Memorandums of Understanding with Cuba, the Dominician Republic and Mexico to develop a multidestination framework. Stakeholders are expected to meet later this year to begin strategy discussions.

If successful, this framework will pave the way for further regional integration and encourage other Caribbean countries to adopt the multi-destination model.

Closer integration

Expedia attributed the jump in interCaribbean travel to effective marketing platforms, market intelligence and an increase in connectivity.

Connectivity is one of the biggest challenges in developing a multidestination framework, not just in terms of

transportation but also easing travel across borders and between countries. Hopping from one island to the next shouldn’t mean endless queues at immigration; a more efficient process to enable regional tourists would allow for multi-destination visas to simplify the necessary paperwork. To facilitate this, destinations must coordinate and align their immigration policies.

Governments can also take advantage of technology to ease travel around the region, allowing tourists to apply for permits via their mobile devices, check-in online and use a harmonised roaming system wherever they are in the islands. The proposed Single ICT Space, an initiative being driven by CARICOM and expected to take effect in 2022, will give these efforts a boost by ensuring that all Caribbean countries meet a common standard in their digital capability.

Navigating the Caribbean requires carefully coordinated transport links and routes. Air connectivity, of the lack of it, is a significant obstacle to growth, according to the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). In May the CDB released a report identifying the main barriers to intra-regional connectivity as high operating costs, regulatory impediments, inefficient infrastructure and inadequate investment. A reduction in taxes and airport fees, combined

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Increasing the number of inter-island ferry services operating in the Caribbean is a long overdue development in the regional travel market. In September of this year, the World Bank completed a preliminary feasibility study on the implementation of such a service designed to increase the flow of goods, people, and vehicles from the north of the Caribbean to the south.

L’Express des îles, the Guadeloupean inter-island ferry service, has been a model studied by the bank

with regulatory harmonisation could lead to liberalisation of the market according to the CDB which estimates that making these changes could boost passenger numbers by 28 per cent by 2025.

A multi-destination approach in tourism will also involve coordinated marketing efforts. Sharing promotional efforts will help destinations share costs and develop a common message. Last month, the Caribbean Tourism Organization partnered with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association to launch the ‘Rhythm Never Stops’ campaign which highlights the choice of destinations within the entire region, emphasising each island’s unique characteristics and selling points. “Visitors, past and present, have not been introduced to the offerings of our vast and diverse region,” said CHTA CEO Frank Comito. “We will change that by highlighting the charms contained in the million square miles of Caribbean Sea.” CTO Secretary General Hugh Riley added: “In undertaking this collaborative marketing thrust, we hope to reinforce the power of ‘Brand Caribbean’, definitively showcasing and celebrating our diverse cultural appeal.”

Multi-destination tourism refers to visitors who travel from one Caribbean country to another.

These may be international islandhoppers who want to see everything the region has to offer or Caribbean natives indulging in a staycation

Spreading the tourist dollar not only benefits economies around the Caribbean, it’s also a chance for the region to guard against overcrowding. Sustainable tourism has become critical to the industry as more travellers mean more pressure on the environment and natural resources.

Multi-destination strategies offer Caribbean countries a chance to work together to lessen the tourist footprint and prevent certain hotspots from becoming overburdened.

Untapped potential But it’s not just a job for government. The Unlike cruise tourism, multi-destination visitors are stay-over tourists. They spend private sector also has a key role to play in developing multi-destination tourism and more, they stay longer and they return any framework must involve private-public home to share their experiences with partnership. Creating multi-destination friends and family in valuable word-ofpackages that are attractive to cost-conscious mouth marketing. consumers will need buy-in from resorts, The concept has huge potential for tour operators and other providers in the untapped international markets formerly considered too far-flung for the Caribbean sector. Branded hotels can look to exploiting such as Asia and northern Europe. Having their links with partners in other Caribbean countries while independent operators can endured long-haul flights, these tourists explore new partnerships, with the added are eager to make the most of their visit benefit of sharing marketing costs and to the region and get real value for their promotional investment. Only by working investment, making them more likely to together, can Caribbean tourist economies want to see two or three countries in a grow together. single trip.

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Underappreciated Inter-Caribbean Travel

By Claudia Eleibox, STAR Businessweek Correspondent

I

n February, when the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) presented its Caribbean Tourism Performance Report for 2017, the twenty-one members recorded over 30 million visitors and price-tagged visitor spend at US$37billion. In the latter half of the year some islands were ravaged repeatedly by deadly hurricanes slowing progress in the region but not preventing unprecedented numbers in 2017.

However, while the Caribbean sells hundreds of beaches and island tours to international tourists, natives tend to choose destinations outside of the Caribbean for vacation. Interregional Caribbean travel, however, represents a massive low-hanging fruit that Caribbean governments should pay closer attention to.

Corporate communications officer for LIAT Airways, Shavar Maloney, reported this November that over the past ten years interregional travel has dropped about 30%.

The leading factor for this, according to Maloney, is the 50% increase in Caribbean government taxes and fees compared to the airline’s 10% increase in base fares during the same ten-year period.

The most mobile tourism segment is the millennial traveller who wants to experience something different from their island home, another contributor to decreasing interregional travel. However, it is possible that the region has not done enough in highlighting the breadth of diversity and unique offerings that each individual Caribbean island can offer. Below, we consider what else can be done.

Travel Trends

As much as the rest of the world sees the Caribbean as one place, and the phrase has unfortunately become cliché, the Caribbean islands truly all have something different to offer aside from the common denominator attractions. According to Trip Advisor’s recently published travel trends, the Caribbean’s main markets within the US and UK still look for culinary and water activities, but the fastest growing experiences globally are historical and heritage tours

may not be a bad thing. The Lieutenant Governor in the US Virgin Islands remains steadfast in his suggestion of a regional product for the festival: “Some people may be able to come to one and not the other but may not know about the other one. So it might be an idea worth taking up where the individual committees from the different islands or the different countries decide to do a marketing package surrounding Carnival.”

Interregional Travel Importance

In Saint Lucia, stay-over arrivals by Caribbean nationals has increased 36% from 2012 to 2017, representing a total of 76,300 stay-overs last year

showing a 125% increase in 2017. This is a tourism product that can easily be incubated in the Caribbean and marketed to other islands. Because of its colonial past, the history of each island in the Caribbean Sea is intricately tied to a different European country. So, from one island to another there is still a lot to experience, like the Louvre pyramid mimicked in Saint Lucia’s Pointe Seraphine or the Liberty Bell look-alike in St. Thomas, to get a glimpse of Europe or the United States.

Even the geographical features of each Caribbean island can be remarkably different from one another. Hiking tours are as popular in Saint Lucia as the beaches, while the island also has its autograph Pitons and steaming hot Sulphur Springs. Similarly, Barbados has the Harrison Caves and the Barbados Atlantis Submarines attractions that are not found in Antigua and Barbuda, which has Stingray City and unrivalled pink sand beaches, or Trinidad, which has Caroni Bird Sanctuary.

Share Ideas

It’s also a way to share different ideas for tourism within the region. For example, spotting one sugar mill every few miles and knowing your island’s independence date is a lot different from walking through the historical town of Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas which has colonial Danish buildings from as early as the 1600s for everyday use like housing government offices. Earlier this year, this newspaper reported the watershed research that took place in Saint Lucia on the island’s Amerindian petroglyphs which could one day create an entirely new avenue for tourism. As an example of how this type of cultural Caribbean tourism can work, St. John has already mass-produced jewellery and other keepsakes marked with the island’s signature petroglyphs for sale to locals and tourists alike.

And if there’s one thing that Caribbean people love, it’s Carnival. While each island markets separately, each festival is at a different time of year. Selling one product

Last year’s hurricane season highlighted the fragility of the region and its tourism industry. Different governments have emphasized that we underestimate the significance of travel within the Caribbean, but understanding the challenges the region faces together might be what boosts an interregional market. In other words, West Indian travellers are simply more tolerable of hurricane-damaged conditions than international tourists.

LIAT recorded a drop from 1.3 million travellers to just fewer than 800,000 in the Eastern Caribbean sub-region. But the new flights opened last year, such as from Antigua to St. Thomas, were by November fully booked from December to March 2019 with customers coming from St. Kitts, Saint Lucia and Barbados. The reason, according to USVI tourism commissioner, Beverly NicholsonDoty: “LIAT doesn’t just connect visitors to our territory or vacationers, it connects families.

And so people are able to come to the territory to visit friends and family but also the reverse.”

What Now?

In the European Union it’s easy to hop from one country to the next because of cheaper fares and the lack of border controls within its region. “People say [the EU] economies are scaled but there are combined 5 million people in the English-speaking Caribbean which is a significant number for an airline to benefit from if it were cheaper to travel,” said Maloney, “It’ll take will power from all our Caribbean governments to say interregional travel is important. The integration of the region is important.”

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Hashtag heaven: inside the world of travel’s top Insta-influencer Continued from page 7

BD is now in the business of what Jauncey calls “nation branding . . . how does a country position itself for a future generation of traveller?” The company’s creative team travels to destinations with drones and cameras to shoot imagery for clients to use in old and new media, often also sharing that content as “paid partnership” posts on the main BD feed.

Jauncey shows me a video that BD made for Bermuda. The minute-long story of an attractive young couple from New York visiting the island is as slick as anything I’ve seen on primetime TV. Partnerships like this invariably produce clips of varying lengths as well as imagery for use on- and offline. So when does an Instagram account become a branding agency like any other? “I think Beautiful Destinations are very good at what they do, but that’s all they are,” says Paul

Charles, head of London-based travel PR firm the PC Agency. “They’re just using good imagery to boost a brand.” This is not, unsurprisingly, how Jauncey sees it.

He says no other agency or brand matches BD’s social expertise or following. “We have enormous capability to help brands decide what platforms to be on,” he insists.

As new clients got in touch after the Dubai gig, Jauncey says BD began to get smarter in the way it used the data that its main account generated. He recruited data scientists to build “a robust prediction engine” to show a client, for example, which of a selection of promotional images would do best on different platforms. Jauncey declines to describe exactly how these algorithms work, but he has explained previously how the “digital fingerprint” of an image — its colour, hue, brightness, and percentage

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of person versus landscape — can be measured against its performance to start establishing patterns.

If the industry has been slow to get smart about social media promotion, many travel brands have been influenced themselves to get Instagram ready.

Paul Charles points to one naked example in Marrakesh, where luxury hotel La Sultana installed a large empty frame on its roof to, well, frame the Atlas Mountains. It begged to be Instagrammed, but “the problem of course is that there’s no definitive proof that that has boosted sales,” Charles adds.

Colin Nagy, a travel columnist based in New York and the head of strategy at global ad agency Fred & Farid, believes the third phase of Instagram travel will be more sophisticated marketing tools that drill into monolithic follower counts, and new technology linking ads directly to bookings. “So ‘here’s a targeted deal based on your data and here’s how you book right now’,” he explains. “Right now you can have a bazillion followers but how many are real, how many have the means to spend?”

In the meantime, Jauncey says BD’s power is to provide background inspiration, as well as its direct reaches for wallets. And beyond his opaque algorithmic approach, he says that finding a novel angle is crucial (that and shooting at sunrise or sunset). Back on his own feed, he shows me a recent photo from a trip to Jordan, where he spoke at a conference about social media and “resilience” in tourism. BD has worked with Jordan to help it reverse a

As well as sharing nice photos, BD has become a kind of advertising and branding agency.

It uses slick video, data and proprietary algorithms to boost digital audiences — particularly on Instagram — for brands including Marriott, Hilton, Shangri-La and various tourism boards steep decline in visitor numbers during the crisis in neighbouring Syria.

In some downtime after the conference, Jauncey hired a young guide for a tour of Petra. The boy led him up to a rocky promontory with a view down on the Treasury, Petra’s most famous — and photographed — temple. The boy laid a rug on the rock for Jauncey to sit on. A photo of him taken with an iPhone of the scene got more than 40,000 likes. For Lina Annab, Jordan’s minister of tourism and antiquities, the photo was a bonus beyond the BD campaign, but she’ll take it. “In today’s social media-driven world, a picture is worth tens of thousands of engagements,” she says.

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Cruise ship revival opens new channels for onboard retail

Starboard, says this new focus is dulling sales at sea and fewer “companies are offering discounts, which has slowed the onboard retail business”.

MSC Cruises carried 1.97m passengers last year and says it has the largest inhouse retail operation at sea. Watches and

By Rachael Taylor, FT Retail & Consumer Correspondent jewellery account for as much as half of sales on some routes, according to head ith steaming pots 90 ships by 2020. “The cruise industry has of retail Adrian Pittaway. He admits that of tea and tiny upped its game in creating ships that rival shoppers’ ability to compare prices online glossy cakes, the imagination and it’s vital that our retail and aggressive discounting in ports means iced in distinctive experience does the same,” she added. prices onboard still need to be competitive.

Tiffany blue, high While stores aboard liners have what might But he says there is growth potential in tea on a World be considered a captive audience, they do have spending quality time with shoppers.

Dream cruise liner is now a jewellery sales competition from the shops that cluster around “Experience is at the heart of cruise event. It is one of a growing number of the ports where the ships dock. These outlets retailing,” says Mr Pittaway. “As our ships experiences introduced to ships in recent focus on discounting. Where once the cruise get more innovative, more creative and years by cruise operators seeking to win ship stores would try to compete with them on more expansive, so too must we develop more custom from their passengers. price, and to an extent still do, there has been a The deck of Royal Caribbean Cruise’s our experiential element of retailing so The cruise industry is in rude health. shift towards grabbing consumer spending via ‘Harmony of the Seas’ liner © Bloomberg that it is a holistic part of the [wider] cruise Nearly 27m passengers set sail last experiences and interactive sales events rather experience. “In future, the whole ship can be year, according to the Cruise Liners than through cost savings.

Like other brands selling on the seas, Hublot a shopping experience — that is our vision.”

International Association, with the “Cruise retail has shifted from the ports, MSC plans to launch 13 luxury liners is rolling out experiences to capture shoppers’ 2018 figure expected to reach 28m. when there was a short time to decide and between 2017 and 2026 as part of an 11bn attention. It sends watchmakers on cruises to Passenger numbers have risen about aggressive promotions, to onboard shopping, investment programme. Many other cruise run seminars where guests can, for example, a quarter over the past five years. The where there is much more chance to immerse ship operators have similarly ambitious assemble a watch movement. average passenger is aged 47 — a the shoppers in the brand experience,” says plans.

Richard Guadalupe, Hublot chief executive, little younger than the retiree cruiser Eddie LeVian, chief executive of US jewellery Serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson says his luxury watch brand was the first to stereotype — and they like to shop. brand LeVian.

With duty-free savings to be made and Known for its chocolate-coloured diamonds, invest seriously in cruise ship retailing in 2013 will enter the fray with the launch of Virgin Voyages in 2020. The retail and has seen strong sales growth in the sector plenty of time on board to kill, retail has LeVian is part of a retail initiative launched in recent years. “Cruise retail has become much contract for the venture’s first ship — The always been an important element of

by Starboard on one of Carnival Cruise Line’s Scarlet Lady, an adults-only vessel with more professional, with companies trying to cruises. Last year, watches and jewellery ships. luxurious interiors — has been handed to maximise revenues onboard rather than in the accounted for 24 per cent of total retail The concept is focused on creating ports,” he says. “It is not the small souvenirs or Harding Retail, which currently operates sales aboard cruise ships, according to personal shopping events, which include gadgets any more, but a full range of products, 250 stores on 62 ships. analyst m1nd-set.

LeVian’s “Style Me Famous” sessions, Kat Florence will be one of the jewellers This sales channel is becoming more where its sales staff dress guests up in jewels, including luxury items.” on board. Ms Florence has already found For many years, shopping in the Caribbean sophisticated as brands including encourage them to pose for photos and — one of the regions where Hublot sells aboard success on the high seas — she sold a Breitling, Chanel and Chopard set up give them a gemstone gift — a cushion-cut $250,000 gold necklace set with diamonds ships — was all about grabbing a bargain, boutiques on a range of routes from the chocolate quartz worth $100 — in the hope and a rare zultanite gemstone on board Caribbean to Alaska. that they will decide to pay $99 to upgrade to Mr Guadalupe says. “But with the overall another ship in April. She has been charged experience going more luxury, price is not the “While land-based retail is suffering quartz earrings valued at $199. with designing “an incredible mermaid only topic any more. It’s all about enjoying from internet competition, cruise retail Cruises enable retailers to create a jewel to mascot the boat”. the holidays and indulging.” Some passengers is thriving,” said Beth Neumann, chief “memorable buying experience in the age of Virgin Voyages has vowed to disrupt the view a luxury watch, one that is also perhaps executive of cruise ship retail operator internet shopping”, says Mr LeVian. “We see exclusive to the ship, as a memento of their trip, market by targeting fashionable well-heeled Starboard (which devised the Tiffany & the future of retail being defined in this fastpassengers who would never have dreamt Co afternoon tea package) in a strategy paced environment where storytelling [can be] he adds. previously of setting foot on a cruise ship.

Not everyone is happy about cruise liners’ statement this year. The group, owned fine-tuned and flexibility is built into the store The bigger challenge will be getting shift away from price wars with ports, however.

by LVMH, announced plans to expand model. The LeVian store of the future will be them to open their wallets.

Atelier Swarovski, which sells through its empire to sell 750 brands across born on a ship.”

Luxury brands are concocting interactive experiences to lure the next wave of cruisers

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Young Saint Lucian entrepreneur quietly dominating the Tourism Industry

By Keryn Nelson, STAR Businessweek Correspondent

J

anus Gyan, who was born and raised in Saint Lucia’s attraction capital, Soufriere, operates at the helm of what he refers to as a business eco-system under the name “Islander Group”. Its tentacles connect mainly three operations: a less than a decade-old, multiperson, private car transfer enterprise; three upscale villas and apartments named Serrena, Sapphire, Sargas plus a fourth, newly developing Saba; and a dedicated cluster of excursion specialists.

Clients say it’s his insistence on intricate customer service that places this 32-year-old businessman ahead of the rest. As if features in Forbes magazine and USA today would not suffice, he has over 2,500 reviews on Trip Advisor, some from high-end clientele, to prove it.

32-year-old Janus Gyan (middle) has snagged several awards for his strides in the tourism industry, including the Hall of Fame Award from Trip Advisor

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What strategies did you use to build your business to what it is now?

Janus: I took advantage of the internet as

a platform because it’s basically levelled up the playing field and made it possible for everyone to get involved. Also, we buy cars that are affordable, because, believe it or not, you can have a normal car and when the client sits inside, it’s so well taken care of they feel like they’re in a Mercedes Benz. Not just that, we manage things well. I’ve gone through so many crappy people that now I have the cream of the crop and that’s awesome.

Caribbean and the Caribbean is known throughout the world. Saint Lucia has this competitive advantage here where it boasts its natural attractions; places like the Pitons and the volcano. A lot of people, when they see that kind of marketing, they won’t want to go anywhere else. People will always want to come to Saint Lucia as long as we still have these competitive advantages and trademarks.

old. I was always geared towards doing my own thing. I’ve never, ever felt comfortable being within an office environment; it’s good

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Why do you believe Saint Lucia’s tourism industry will withstand the tests of time?

Janus: One thing is we’re within the

When and how did your journey as an entrepreneur begin?

Janus: I started all by myself at 24 years

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experience but, at the same time, it just wasn’t my thing. I kept on asking myself questions; What is Saint Lucia all about?

What makes Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia?

If there was one industry we couldn’t do without, what would that be? A light bulb went off; tourism. I set up a travel website to give people information on various things related to Saint Lucia and then one day someone sent me this email asking “Hey Janus, what is the cost of a transfer from UVF airport, up to the north?” I called the different places down in the south to find out the price and decided to lower it.

The client booked his trip a year ahead and I picked him up. That’s when I noticed there was a mega demand for private transfer in Saint Lucia. People wanted to be able to afford being picked up privately and taken to their resort.

How has the company grown since then?

Janus: I started by myself until I began

to go mad when the emails would come in really fast and I would get them like every 20 seconds or so. I realized there’s no way I could’ve done this by myself and then I went on a hiring spree. Now we have about 30 persons working with us in the office, some from at home, we have the private transportation services, some working in the villas and we also offer private chef services. It’s all about making Saint Lucia an affordable place to visit.

How do you stay motivated?

Janus: There’s no personal development

speaker that you can name that I don’t know about, not one. From the Robbins, to Nightingales, to Grant Cardones of the world. A vacation for me is reading about Jeff Bezos, that’s like one of the most exciting things and he’s one of my biggest mentors, in my head. I do things like constantly ask myself whether I am satisfying my imaginary board of directors which includes people like Jack Wells, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. I imagine them saying, “What did you do today?” And I have to tell them what I did, so I cannot be like, “Uhhhh.” So I go out and make it happen.

What is your advice to aspiring entreprenuers who may be doubting themselves?

Janus: I generally tend to look at it from

a perspective where we’re so finite, in terms of life. So you don’t want to wake up at 60 and be like, “Why didn’t I take that chance?”

Because one day you are going to be 60, then 80, and you don’t want to feel regret or rather, what kind of regret would you prefer to feel? The regret of having tried something that failed or the regret of not doing something because you were terrified it was going to fail. So it’s like it’s not really just about starting your own business, it’s deeper than that. You really want to make something happen? You’re in a job that you don’t like; I’m not saying just quit your job, you never really do that, but you are going to have a lot of time after work where you can concentrate on doing things everyday to make your business happen.

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