What makes Saint Lucia different, and why should investors come towards your island instead of Jamaica or Barbados, for example?

St Lucia is unique due to its astounding physical beauty. We have a volcano, rainforest, beautiful beaches, heritage sightseeing facilities, mountain climbing, hiking, diving... we also have a mix of luxury five-star hotels as well as regular accommodations. In short, we have a real mix in a small package, and we also offer a well-developed financial centre with world-class telecommunications services.

What do you think of the saying: “size matters”? Do you believe that the small size of St. Lucia can give it an edge on bigger islands, allowing it to adapt faster and obtain large development projects?

We are indeed small in terms of size, but there is great potential. The infrastructure in St. Lucia can maintain a few large projects, so I don’t think we have reached the zenith as far as large projects are concerned. We have the capacity to build a few more large hotels – the key is to find our niche where we are most effective and where investments are going to be most efficient for our country.

It is widely known that tourism and infrastructure development go hand in hand – one must come before the other. How do you develop your infrastructure, while promoting tourism?

Tourism has been expanding, and 2003 has been our best year. The Cricket World Cup will give us the extra jump that we need; we estimate a presence of 30,000 people in St. Lucia for the World Cup. Imagine the global impact, given the fact that a billion people will hear of St. Lucia thanks to the Cricket World Cup, in both Europe and Asia.

Which tourism market are you more focused on?

We have about 60% of our market coming from the United States, the rest are Europeans, of which British comprise the largest group.

Your plan is to expand to 7000 hotel-room-capacity on the island. How far away are you from achieving this target?

Right now we have approximately 5000 hotel rooms already built. We are currently building more hotels around some of our beaches, and we are reaching more than half of our target at the present time. However, I am not certain that we will be able to reach the target we set for ourselves, and we hope that the Cricket World Cup will build confidence towards further hotel construction on the island.