Basseterre, St. Kitts – Nevis
January 17, 2008 (CUOPM)
St. Kitts and Nevis‘ Minister of State for Tourism, Hon. Richard Skerritt says that American Airlines’ non-stop, twice-weekly round trip service on Wednesdays and Sundays to St. Kitts’ Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport has already proven to be a “bonanza” for the destination.
“The load factors have been fantastic. We are very pleased and so is American,” Skerritt said during a press briefing at the Caribbean Hotel Association’s Caribbean Market place 2008 in Nassau, Bahamas.
The destination will welcome Delta’s new weekly Saturday service beginning Feb. 16 from Atlanta, which will complement exiting nonstop service from Miami on American and from Charlotte, N.C., on US Airways as well as connecting service via San Juan on American Eagle.
“It is gratifying to see continual progress in the development of St. Kitts’ tourism product,” Skerrit is reported as saying in the story carried on Travel Weekly- the National Newspaper of the Travel Industry and bylined by Gay Nagle Myers.
“We remain committed to developments that are keeping with our efforts to preserve and promote our nation’s key attributes of nature, culture, and heritage. We have been pro-active in supporting these projects with the addition of new airlift service from the island’s key feeder markets,” said Skerritt.
At the CHA confab, Skerritt outlined the tourism development under way in St. Kitts:
The Christopher Harbour development on the island’s southeast peninsula is comprised of projects by Kiawah Development Partners, Auberge Resort and Mandarin Oriental as well as local enterprises. Sandy Bank Bay, a 75 suite-Auberge Resort, will begin its first phase of development later this year and is headed by Eustace “Guish” Guishard, Managing Director, who formerly headed Cap Julucua in Anguilla and who went to high school in St. Kitts.
A restaurant, sales office and four one-bedroom models will open next month on the site.
The Carambola Beach Club in South Friar’s Bay will open the second half of the year and will include a gourmet restaurant with a wine cellar featuring more than 4,000 bottles of wine from 175 different labels. Watersports and wait service on the beach also will available to guests.
The first phase of the 40-acre Ocean’s Edge condominium resort development in Frigate Bay area was topped out last month. The project will include 185 units of one- and two- bedroom beachfront apartments, two- bedroom hillside units with individual plunge pools, two bedroom garden cottages and a choice of three- and four-bedroom villas.
Kittitian Hill in the northern part of St. Kitts will begin construction this year as a sustainable Caribbean community featuring a village with a creative arts center, villas, apartments, a cottage hotel designed with traditional Kittitian cottages, a spa and a golf course. Ground has already been broken for the golf course.
This all sounds grand, but I hope the powers that be don’t turn Nevis into another Antigua.
We have seen so many islands over the years ruined by development….keep Nevis the way it is.
Already the development has caaused more crime, and crass commercialism that Nevis did not exhibit just 10 years ago.