St Lucia minister is Caribbean Travel Personality of the Year
St Lucia’s Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation Senator Allen Chastanet has been named the Caribbean Travel Personality of the Year.
He won the honour at the prestigious 2009 World Travel Awards which acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all sectors of the global travel and tourism industry.
“It’s with great humility that I accept this award on behalf of the Government and people of St Lucia,” Minister Chastanet said, accepting the award in London.
At the event, St Lucia once again copped the Caribbean’s and World’s Leading Honeymoon Destination designations, while the Caribbean’s Leading Spa Resort went to The Body Holiday LeSport. The Caribbean’s Leading Hotel Brand and the World’s Leading All-Inclusive Company went to Sandals Resorts.
“As a St Lucian, I am deeply honoured to witness such a small destination create a big bang on the world stage,” said the island’s director of tourism Louis Lewis, who acknowledged that the weekend awards were additional stimuli for the St Lucia Tourist Board to continue striving to improve in today’s competitive travel and tourism environment.
Senator Chastanet, who is credited with starting the world-acclaimed St Lucia Jazz festival, was vice-president of sales and marketing with Windjammer Landing in St Lucia before being appointed the island’s director of tourism in the early 1990s.
He became director of sales and marketing at Island Outpost in the mid-90s before serving as director, then vice- president of worldwide sales and marketing at Air Jamaica for eight years.
In 2001, Travel Agent magazine named Chastanet “Caribbean Destination Person of the Year,” and in 2003 he returned to his native St Lucia to open Coco Resorts in Rodney Bay Village.
He was appointed to the St Lucia cabinet in 2006 and assumed the chairmanship of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation.