WHITEHOUSE, Westmoreland

SANDALS Whitehouse European Village and Spa will host this year’s 11th annual staging of the Entertainment Now Creates Opportunity Rewarding Excellence (ENCORE) Grand Finals at the resort’s Le Cabaret Theatre on Saturday.

ENCORE, a talent and model search competition, is staged throughout the Sandals/ATL Group across the Caribbean. Resorts and regions conduct elimination shows and select finalists to represent their respective islands in the last hurrah for the year, which is the Grand Finale.

This year’s regional favourites from Jamaica, The Bahamas, St Lucia, Antigua, Grenada and Turks and Caicos Islands will all be vying for the top spots in various categories, ranging from Best Instrumentalist, Best Male and Female Vocalist, Best Dance Performance, to Top Male and Female Model.

Winners in the grand finals will enjoy attractive prizes, including their very own engraved acrylic award, certificates and gift packages courtesy of Fontana and the resorts’ sports and social clubs, cellular phones courtesy of Digicel, weekends for two at any Sandals and Beaches hotels, as well as one-year contracts to perform at their respective resorts.

According to Weston Haughton, Sandals’ creative director and mastermind behind the competition, ENCORE came about when American Idol and talent shows of that nature were becoming increasingly popular.

“We thought to ourselves that Sandals has remarkable employees and a competition would be a great way to expose the multiplicity of talent within our organisation and further aid in team-member motivation and development. This splendid event has grown over the years and we are extremely proud of the winners who have really gained from the competition. Our 2010 Top Female Vocalist Joanna Walker opened for Tessanne Chin at our recent Jamaica Product Exchange (JAPEX) parties at Sandals Montego Bay and that was a wonderful experience for her,” said Haughton.

He added that ENCORE gets bigger and better every year and the 2014 staging promises to be an extraordinary production. “Everyone has stepped up their ‘A’ game this year. Newcomer Grenada is full of excitement and so is St Lucia. The Jamaican team is ready and eager to ‘tek it to dem’ and we can only wait in grand expectation for what our teams from Antigua, Turks and Caicos and The Bahamas have up their sleeves,” Haughton added.