BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – JUST five years in, and the Latin Festival is receiving commendation from the Tourism Authority for the contribution it is making to the St. Kitts brand and product.
The fifth Latin Festival – which runs from October 20 to October 26 – was officially launched last week at the St. Kitts Marriott Hotel.
And in giving brief remarks at that ceremony, Chief Executive Officer of the Tourism Authority Raquel Brown said the Festival assists in broadening the St. Kitts brand beyond the “sun, sea, sand…beautiful accommodations…world-class restaurants…excursions” etc.
“…Sometimes visitors want to come and have an interaction that speaks to culture and heritage or interactions with other cultures and other heritages. And outside of the other festivals that we do throughout the year and we sponsor, the Latin Fiesta is very important because within the Caribbean and the Latin American region, there is a population that travels (and) wants to have experiences that speak to authentic experiences that are aligned with their culture and heritage and that’s what the Latin Fiesta speaks to.”
She explained that as the spending power of the Latin American community grows, so does the need for St. Kitts to provide appealing activities for them to visit the island to engage in. She indicated that the Latin Festival is one such activity.
“It is so important for us in St. Kitts to reach out to our Latin and American potential visitors, I call them our brothers and sisters because believe it or not Latin America is growing dramatically in their accumulation of wealth, especially Brazil, Sao Paulo, it is one of the richest cities in the Latin America region and we need to be able to reach out to them and be appealing to them and they need to be able to identify with similarities in their…culture.”
The CEO said another positive of the Festival is that it stimulates tourism activity during a rocky timefor tourism - October - just before the beginning of the tourist season.
“…It aligns very well with our tourism brand as we continue to grow and as we continue to grow beyond our Latin American shores, we have visitors in North America who also in October are looking for something different – just around the fall...This activity is strategically placed in October – whether it was designed or not – but it helps us as a brand for tourism because September and October are very rough times in tourism for travel but it helps us and it gears up just before November so it helps our brand.
In pledging the Tourism Authority’s commitment to the Festival, Brown said, “So I really would like to just say that the St. Kitts Tourism Authority will be committed to supporting this festival - as we’ve done for the last five years - and I thank the Minister for his vision and his commitment…”
