Denise Clarke, Staff Reporter
GROS ISLET, St. Lucia:
TRAVEL AGENTS worldwide have again recognised Jamaica as the top tourist destination in the Caribbean, at the World Travel Awards held in St. Lucia on Friday night.
A total of nine awards went to the island's tourism industry, including that for being the Caribbean's leading destination. The national airline, Air Jamaica was voted the Caribbean's leading airline.
The big winner of the night, however, was the Gordon 'Butch' Stewart-led Sandals Hotel Group, which copped five awards including the world's leading all-Inclusive for the ninth consecutive year.
The Jamaican hotel chain was also chosen as the Caribbean's leading hotel group, while Sandals Antigua received the award for world's leading honeymoon resort.
The Beaches subsidiary of the group also won two awards, for world's leading family all-inclusive, while Beaches Royal Plantation Golf Resort and Spa was named the Caribbean's leading resort.
"I think it is a tremendous achievement," said Leo Lambert, corporate communications director of the Sandals Group. "We have a fine tradition of excellence and what these awards confirm is that the rest of the world, our travel partners, share that view."
Other winners were the Half Moon Golf, Tennis and Beach Club which received the award for the Caribbean's Leading Hotel, while Round Hill Hotel and Villas, headed by the President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) Josef Fortsmayr, was chosen as the world's leading villas.
Speaking to reporters following the function, Director of Tourism, Fay Pickersgill, described the awards as a significant achievement for the country's tourism product, which could play a pivotal role in the recovery efforts since last year's terrorist attacks in the United States.
"When the world votes for Jamaica we need to understand that this is big time business we are talking about. In Jamaica we tend very often to speak about the negatives and focus on the negatives. We have so many positives going for us and the world is seeing the positive that we have," Mrs. Pickersgill said.
Turning to industry's recuperation since the attacks, the tourism director said the country is regaining some amount of market share which was lost in the period immediately following the attacks, but cautioned that the country is still a far way from full recovery.
"We are moving along steadily in the recovery process. September and October last year were very bad months, we are showing significant increases this year. I think in the first three weeks of October we were up by as much as 17 per cent but we can't take too much comfort in that because we are still, for those same three weeks, down by 8.5 per cent compared to 2000," she said.
The World Travel Awards is held annually and is the highest recognition awarded to players in the tourism industry. Travel agents from all over the world vote for the winners.
