By the Caribbean Journal staff

Saint Lucia’s popular Bay Gardens Beach Resort and Spa is nearing the completion of a major renovation process.

The 78-room property has completely refurbished all 18 garden-view rooms, along with 24 beachfront rooms and 20 pool-view rooms.

The remaining 16 pool-view rooms will be finished in time for the start of the peak winter tourist season in December.

The room upgrades include new furniture and pastel fittings, new Smart TVs and new stainless steel kitchen appliances, among others.

It’s part of a wider upgrade project at the resort, which has updated its manus at the Hi Tide and SeaGrapes restaurants.

Later this month, the La Mer Spa will be introducing a new menu including Ayuverdic treatments.

For more, visit Bay Gardens.

— CJ

The post A New Look at Saint Lucia’s Bay Gardens Beach Resort appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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By the Caribbean Journal staff

Fresh off an expansion to Guadeloupe, JetBlue has announced plans to launch new nonstop flights to Guyana on the southern edge of the Caribbean.

The new flights will be operating daily from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Guyana’s Cheddi Jagan International Airport beginning April 2, 2020.

JetBlue will be running the flights on its new Airbus A321 neo aircraft.

“Guyana service introduces a diverse and underserved destination to the JetBlue route map which will benefit both leisure travelers, as well as those visiting friends and relatives,” said Andrea Lusso, director route planning. “Just as we’ve done in our South American markets in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, we’re introducing a new, low fare high-quality choice to travelers in Guyana.”

The Marriott hotel in Georgetown, the country’s leading place to stay.

Guyana has quietly developed a growing niche as an eco-tourism destination, adding to its important regional position as the seat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

“The Government of Guyana is delighted to welcome the services of JetBlue to Guyana,” said, Guyana’s Minister of Public Infrastructure, the Honourable David Patterson. “The introduction of this immensely popular low cost carrier will see lower ticket prices to Georgetown and provide travelers with an opportunity to fly on an airline of choice to their favorite destination.”

Guyana is about a five-hour flight from New York.

Guyana’s raw landscape has become a magnet for travelers in search of adventure and beauty.

The new JetBlue service is the latest airlift boost for Guyana, which saw the launch of new American Airlines flights to Georgetown at the end of 2018. 

“We are extremely excited to welcome JetBlue’s new non-stop services from New York-JFK to Georgetown, Guyana,” said Brian Mullis, Director of the Guyana Tourism Authority. “2019 has been quite a year – increased route options to Europe, new community-led and owned tourism product development, increased stakeholder collaboration, growing demand in our target markets and now JetBlue improving connectivity with one of our core markets – North America.”

Guyana has become arguably the Caribbean’s leading center for community-focused tourism, with a surfeit of popular eco-lodges like Surama, above.

The new A321 neo has an additional 500 nautical miles of range than JetBlue’s traditional planes — meaning the Guyana route would not be possible without it, the company said.

JetBlue also said the new aircraft had the widest seat available for single-aisle Airbus planes, the “Collins Meridian” seat.

— CJ

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By Dana Niland
CJ Contributor

Spirit Airlines says it is adding more space to its cabin.

The low-cost carrier has unveiled what it’s calling new, more comfortable seats that provide “additional legroom.”

Spirit’s new seats, created by UK-based Acro Aircraft Seating, integrate “state-of-the-art” design features, including thicker padding, ergonomically-designed lumbar support, and additional pre-recline. 

“Last year I signed a pledge to look at every facet of our guest experience and determine where we could improve,” said Ted Christie, Spirit Airlines’ President and Chief Executive Officer. “This investment in our seats and onboard experience is a direct result of that commitment, and it also allows us to enhance our product value while maintaining our industry-leading cost structure. We have listened to our guests, and we are responding with these new, more comfortable seats.”

Middle seats will also gain another inch of width, and every seat will gain nearly an inch of pre-recline compared to Spirit’s current seating configuration, with exit rows adding even more.

Spirit’s new seats, padded with lightweight foam and made of a composite skeleton, will add comfort without increasing weight, maintaining high fuel efficiency on Spirit’s Fit Fleet.

The new, softer seats include a full-size tray table and an elevated literature pocket and are designed in a matte-black color with border stitching in Spirit’s signature yellow. 

Installation of the new seats will begin in November and continue through 2020 on all new Spirit deliveries.

In addition, Spirit is adding comfort to its “Big Front Seats,” the company said.

Spirit’s updated Big Front Seat will feature a new ergonomically-improved headrest with plush memory foam, additional memory foam in the seat cushion for comfort and thigh support, and sleek Spirit-branded aesthetic with yellow and black stitching. 

“We also believe it is time for our industry to rethink the concept of seat pitch, a metric many industry experts and aviation media have called antiquated and misleading, given the broad differences in seating measurements that more directly affect passenger comfort,” Christie said. “Our research shows that many Guests not only misunderstand the concept of pitch, but strongly believe that comfort derives from usable legroom. Our new seats now offer more usable legroom with their innovative design.”

Partnering with the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, Spirit Airlines says it conducted in-depth analysis on the ergonomics and comfort of the new seats. 

The seats were designed to curve gently around a guest’s back to create a comfortable posture and make available more usable legroom. 

The study showed that most people, from a sampling of more than 1,000 air travelers, did not know the true definition of “seat pitch,” the space between a point on one seat and the same point on the seat in front of it. 

“Pitch is an outdated industry term for measuring seat comfort, as it does not consider a range of important key factors like seatback curvature, seat width, cushion thickness, and usable space,” said Steve Barraclough, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors. “The ‘Usable Legroom’ metric is the distance from the center of the back of the seat cushion to the outer edges of the seat in front. We believe this metric provides a potential basis that all airlines could calculate and could offer the passenger new, evidence-based information about the potential comfort of the seat.”

Spirit has been on a rapid expansion push in the Caribbean, particularly out of Orlando.

— CJ

The post Spirit Airlines Is Adding More Legroom appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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By Julie Bielenberg
CJ Contributor

ST VINCENT – It was perhaps fitting that the Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism was delayed by a storm.

What was then-Tropical Storm Dorian delayed the beginning of the recent Caribbean Tourism Organization’s 2019 sustainability conference at the Beachcombers Hotel in St Vincent, highlighting the need for a more sustainable — and resilient — Caribbean region.

But what the return of this eminently relevant conference showed was that sustainability is not just about the climate.

It’s about people.

It’ s about managing to fuse the needs of the environment and its people, to effect development in a way that safeguards both communities and economies.

From a stirring talk by Bahamas Tourism Director General Joy Jibrilu to fascinating deep-dives into the essence of eco-tourism, the 2019 edition of this conference was, well, essential.

Diplomats, politicians and delegates of tourism from around the wider Caribbean thoughtfully met in advance of what would become a category five storm (some via satellite) to emphasize the responsibility of this group to utilize forethought and community awareness in future tourism planning and marketability.

Conference discourse included development models for social integration, community-based tourism, the potential for renewable energy, indigenous conversations, people, planet and profit, the tourism evolution, nurturing the nature including emotional and, perhaps most importantly, profound addresses by both H. Elizabeth Thompson, Barbados’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations and St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves.

H. Elizabeth Thompson.

The celebrated Thompson underscored the need to understand the importance and significance of the “route of culture, as culture is pulling the people.”

“When a hotel seeks to destroy and build on the last remaining mangrove area or a special ecosystem is the development denied or allowed; when new tourism villas will cut off the access of local communities to a popular beach, who is given precedence; who in our governments and tourism sectors make the determination of pursuing short term gain over long term sustainability and do we truly appreciate the link between climate resilience, profitability in the tourism sector and sustainability amongst other debatable topics,” she wondered.

Gonsalves, the longtime leader of St Vincent and the Grenadines, greeted storm-anxious, and eager-conference participants, with enthusiasm for his country’s eco-evolution and its calm, methodical preparedness for the hurricane.

Gonsalves pointed to seven challenges that must be addressed for tourism to match its benefit and not capitalize on capacity and trend— climate change, resource scarcity, fresh water, the aging of society, growing inequality, artificial intelligence, capital and unilateralism and nativism.

“There is an understanding, a patience that must be exhibited on our 150-square mile, 110,000 people island,” he said. “We are the smallest country to ever sit on the UN Security Council,” then referencing his country’s next phase of lodging and brands, eco-aware projects and amongst other global items, reiterating what a small, cohesive society can undertake, overcome and how to succeed in the modern era of community, tourism and equal profitability.

Guyana is home to the Rewa Eco-Lodge, one of the most important examples of community-focused tourism on earth.

There is arguably no greater example of a sustainable tourism endeavor than the Rewa Ecolodge in Guyana, a project that has set a new standard for sustainability — and reinforced the definition of the term.

That was the theme of the talk by the Chief of the Toshao Tribe, Rudolph Edwards, who is now the manager of the Rewa Ecolodge,, who explained his community’s depleting natural resources due to rival tribe poaching.

Edwards created his eco-lodge not merely out of hospitality, he said, but out of a need to survive — to survive local challenges and oncoming global implications.

He took a community where even the concept of a hotel booking was an abstract concept, building every aspect of infrastructure possible—transportation, supply, trade, business language and negotiation — and eventually establishing one of the most culturally-sustainable, innovative, and notable community-based tourism projects in the world.

Throughout what was one of, if not, the most profound speeches of the conference, Edwards explained the astronomical challenges and obstacles overcome by his community — a journey that resulted in what is one of the most culturally-sustainable, innovative, and notable community-based tourism projects in the world.

So what was the biggest takeaway for destinations from the world’s largest public gathering, to date, focused on environmentally, ethically and economically-based-issues in the Caribbean?

The most positive social impact and benefit for both traveler and island is about knowing and showing who you are, why you are unique and about all of the facets of community that set you apart from any other island.

— CJ

The post Making Caribbean Tourism Sustainable — And What It Means appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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