St Lucia’s Tourism Minister, Dr Ernest Hilaire, Thursday, said that there is “virtually” no regional travel as he lamented the loss of the services provided by the cash-strapped regional airline to several regional destinations.
“We actually do not have high regional travel right now and regional travel was probably our second largest source of arrivals in 2019 and we virtually have no regional travel and we are already up to 75-80 per cent of what we were in 2019 without a significant regional travel component,” Hilaire told a meeting of the Tourism Advisory Committee.
“And it is an issue that I am going to raise with the Prime Minister in a very detailed way. What can we do to provide greater support to LIAT to get LIAT functioning once again,” Hilaire said, adding that “the situation that we are in right now shows the foolhardiness of the views that were held in the past about LIAT.
“Yes, we must all agree LIAT was not the best example of a well-run, well-managed company. There are a lot of criticisms of LIAT but we have had experiences over decades that when others came, promised a lot and failed to deliver, we always had to go back and rely on LIAT with all its deficiencies,” Hilaire told the meeting.
He said St Lucia was notorious in the last few years for criticising LIAT, undermining the airline, and ‘really cheering for LIAT’s downfall’.
“That’s a fact. And look at what COVID has exposed. It has really exposed out naked behinds. All the others that came to promise and said they were committed to this region, where are they and now we are begging for LIAT to come back.
“Just imagine if LIAT had 15, 20 flights a day into St. Lucia with all its deficiencies wouldn’t we welcome that than what we have now. The point is we need a regional travel capacity that we have influence over, that we can control and we know operates in our best interest,” he said, insisting that St. Lucia needs regional travel capacity that will serve its interests.
The Tourism Minister said that there was need to sit down to discuss how the island can contribute to getting LIAT functioning a lot better than it is currently and increase the airline’s capacity because this country’s tourism industry needs a strong region travel capacity.
“I can tell you as the Minister also responsible for Creative Industries and the organizing of Carnival we’re missing it. We are doing very well, but a lot of the visitors we have that are going to be coming in are coming in from international markets and not so many from the regional markets,” Hilaire said.
He said that while the Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines (CAL) had added ‘a couple more flights’, they were still not enough.
Last week, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, who had earlier complained of the challenges he faced as he was preparing for a number of overseas trips, including travel through the Caribbean, has said he has a “plan in mind” for regional air travel.
While he did not disclose the plan to listeners of a radio programme in his homeland, Gonsalves detailed the history of the failed regional carrier LIAT, an entity he served as chairman of for the shareholder governments.
The airline, is owned by the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said previously that a decision had been taken that would allow Barbados and SVG to turn over their shares in LIAT to St John’s for one EC dollar.
Gonsalves said that air transportation in the region is now “a real mess”, and that he had soldiered on for two decades, having come to office, in March 2001, at a time when governments across the region “were bowing and scraping before Allan Stanford”, the Texan businessman and founder of the failed airline, Caribbean Star, who was later jailed for life in the United States for operating a Ponzi scheme..
Prime Minister Gonsalves said he stood up to Stanford, adding he had maintained that the Texan should not control the region’s skies, even though he had relocated to Antigua.
“Remember I always said that LIAT, a regional air transport carrier, at best is a marginal financial proposition but it is a vital economic and social matter of the highest importance.
Earlier this year, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne appealed to Caribbean trade unions to re-think their positions regarding the latest offer made to laid-off workers of the airline.
The Antigua and Barbuda government said it was providing two million dollars “to meet partial satisfaction of the cash component of the compassionate pay-out” to former local employees of the regional airline, LIAT.
