ON TOUR: St Barths / CARIBAVIA 22 Aviation Conference *

Alison Chambers took a day out from St Maarten’s CARIBAVIA22 Event to fly to Saint-Barthélemy.

“Aviation is crucial to St Barths”.

The words of Xavier Lédée, the island’s newly elected President who took time out of his busy schedule to meet with a few CARIBAVIA22 media and tourism representatives of the Caribbean islands of St Maarten and Saba during a Mini Summit on St Barths on 16 June.

“We are a small island, with a small airport and small harbour, so aircraft connectivity gives us the opportunity not only to welcome tourists, but for our people to move outside the island and go on vacation”, he told us.  St Barths, home to 10,000 residents, is a perfect example of how private aviation and regional aviation work in harmony – St Barth Executive with its Pilatus PC-12s, available for private charter and St Barth Commuter with its regular Cessna Grand Caravan services.

We flew to St Barths on an eight-seat Grand Caravan. Journey time from Grand Case Airport, St Martin – the French side – just seven minutes.

Sustainability in tourism is high on Xavier’s agenda, together with a focus on quality of service and high safety standards. It’s important to have special relationships with our neighbouring islands, including St Maarten, he said. Its Princess Juliana Airport is the main hub for connectivity, accounting for 70% of feed traffic into the island, followed by Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico.

The closeness among these Eastern Caribbean Islands led to some discussion about connectivity in St Barths and the attraction of promoting and marketing St Maarten’s connecting Islands together – each of them offering a unique leisure destination (and among the best landing experiences in the world).

St Maarten is a significant hub for the Caribbean, offering frequent, direct air links to Anguilla, Saba, Stacia, Curaçao, St Kitts, Tortola and St Barths – by commuter aircraft or private, small aircraft charter.

President Lédée and Pascale Minarro, Chair of Comité Territorial de Tourisme de Saint Barthélemy (CTTSB), with Fabrice Danet, St Barths' Airport Director,  Suzy Kartokromo, Marketing Manager at St Maarten Airport and Malinda Hassell, Tourism Manager of Saba Airport, agreed that such a strategy may well help Princess Juliana Airport encourage more direct European air routes.   

May-Ling Chun, Director of Tourism for the St Maarten Tourism Bureau, also participating, highlighted that the UK, together with Germany, Italy and Scandinavia remain firm wish list destinations for Princess Juliana Airport, whose new passenger terminal will be finished by winter 2023.

Latin America is also an important market and St Maarten was pleased to welcome the restart of twice weekly flights to Latin America with COPA reinstating flights to Panama on 2 June.  

The relaxing of strict Covid regulations has certainly seen Central America traffic rush back.  Flying to St Maarten from Washington Dulles for CARIBAVIA22 was completely full.

Underlining this theme, speaking the day before at CARIBAVIA22 on St Maarten, Gavin Eccles, Professor of Aviation and Tourism at Lisbon University (Portugal) highlighted that today’s travel was ‘all about leisure.’ He pointed to Lufthansa piling into Greece and Portugal. Sun Express in Turkey opening on more leisure routes (including to the UK), capitalising on its joint venture with Lufthansa and Saudi Arabia readying to welcome 330m passengers in 2030 into its new resorts – 227m of them it anticipates, will be new travellers.  

Typically, airlines do their network planning over six to eight months, he shared with delegates.  Now it’s more like four to six weeks – so airports and tourist boards need to be adaptable and flexible to keep up. This has become a challenge, he notes, because airports don’t have easy slot availability. Gatwick and Schiphol Airports have just confirmed they are capping annual movements – on the one hand there is the sustainability argument – but in truth it is also about workforce challenges – not enough staff for the operational hours.

Elected on 29 March, to lead the Collectivity of Saint-Barthélemy, Xavier Lédée is determined his Tourism Commission takes a leading role in determining the policy of the island for the next five years. The Commission will work to solidify the historic North American market and strengthen links with customers from Western Europe and South America. Chair is Pascale Minarro who brings 45 years of experience to her role.

St Barths is an overseas collectivity of France located in the French West Indies, renowned for attracting the jet-set. It's a see-and-be-seen place, but nearly 200,000 visitors flock to St Barths for its lush landscape, white sand beaches, and craggy coastlines. The nine-square-mile island takes around 20 minutes to drive around. The peak season is December through March. Low season, April through to August.

Fabrice Danet, General Manager of Aeroport de Saint Barthélmy, works closely with the Collective. Relations are good with the airport.  “We are working to see what we can do to make it better", he said, but that doesn’t include expansion at the airport. St Barths isn’t interested in mass tourism, he says and it doesn’t cater for the big cruise ships. There aren’t any big hotels on the island and this is deliberate. “We want people to want to come to our island, not want to be seen on it”, President Lédée stated.

Our group enjoyed a delicious ocean front lunch at Christopher St Barth - a villa focused hotel with a serene infinity pool combines urban chic ethos with contemporary French design and tropical island vibes.

Its large minimalistic rooms feature peaked wooden ceilings with four-poster beds and glazed concrete floors. The shower rooms are works of art. In the lush grounds is a Sisley Spa with a beautiful aroma of roses as we walked through.

Here, guests can enjoy a massage or facial overlooking the ocean. We were unanimous – a short stay next year is strongly desired.

St Barths is also home to the legendary Eden Rock Hotel with its colourful art deco, bohemian vibe. It has its own private beach. A fleet of BMW Minis are available for guest transport – just perfect for St Barths narrow and windy roads.

Aircraft movements meanwhile stop at 17:30 sunset. Islanders arrive by commercial airline or private jet into St Maarten and take St Barth Commuter Cessna Caravans or St Barth Executive PC-12s.

www.caribavia.org/conference.htm

www.saintbarth-tourisme.com/en/home-of-st-barts-tourism

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