St Kitts is in the midst of a tourism renaissance, buoyed by a new sustainability-fueled tourism branding and new flights from carriers like JetBlue. This summer, the island tapped a new CEO to lead its next tourism push: industry veteran Kelly Fontenelle, who has more than 25 years of experience in the tourism and event management space. Fontenelle, the former director of marketing for the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority, is looking to leverage her skills to enhance St Kitts’ travel awareness, deepen the impact of tourism on the island and push the destination into burgeoning markets. Here’s what she had to say in a recent interview with Caribbean Journal.
What have you learned about St Kitts so far and where do you see the island right now?
When I first arrived in St Kitts, I got that warm feeling. It gives you that warm, calm feeling and I think that resonates in the entire destination and the people. So it’s a very calm destination. So I think visitors who come get that same kind of feeling. I’ve also learned that the food is amazing because it’s almost like a melting pot. We have so many different nationalities on the island, a lot of expats, so you get that in the food as well.
I think culinary travel should be a big thing for the island eventually because we have some really good restaurants. I have not had a bad meal since I’ve been on the island and when I came on, we had Restaurant Week [the island’s annual culinary event] as well, and I think Restaurant Week is very well executed. It’s a beautiful event and it involves locals and visitors alike and I think it’s an event that could be expanded nicely and create a buzz for the island.
What would you say are your big priorities at the outset for St Kitts Tourism?
I think St. Kitts is known as a big cruise destination, so I think one of my big priorities is to make the destination on all-year-round vacation spot and not just the season. So both cruise and stay over. We want it to be a destination people think of for all year round, where anytime of the year you could come to St. Kitts and have a fabulous time.
Are there particular niches of tourism that you think have the most potential for growth?
We have a lot, actually. As I said before, culinary is one and it’s easy to access, especially since we have Restaurant Week that we’ve had for a couple of years. Destination weddings are another area. This is a beautiful island. We have so many lovely iconic spots.. So romance, romance and destination awareness. Wellness. I think wellness is a market that we could definitely look into again because all of our infrastructure and all that we have to offer when it comes to wellness. You could do yoga in the park. We have the [Mount Liamuiga] volcano, we have the clean, fresh air, and so that’s another one that we can look for.
We have won the Caribbean’s Best Dive Destination by the World Travel Awards three years in a row. The divers who come here love it. think dive is the market that we are going to look to see more growth, and help reinforce that all-year-round image. Also eco-adventure. It’s a mountainous island. There’s so much to do on land and underwater as well.
St. Kitts does not have any all-inclusive hotels. And that works in our favor, because we want the clients to get out of the hotel and explore the destination, immerse in the culture, meet the locals, enjoy some community tourism and really feel that you went to an island and had a vacation.
We’ve seen good airlift growth in recent years, most notably with the JetBlue flight. How do you see that continuing? What kind of hopes do you have for growing more airlift to St Kitts?
With the introduction of JetBlue for the North American market, we’ve seen the growth and the flights are doing quite well. It has brought us a different set of visitors coming to St. Kitts. So we have JetBlue three days a week and I know it will grow. Eventually, we want to get to daily service and eventually get Mint service and then get nonstop out of Boston once that starts growing.
You have been sort of one of the leading advocates for travel agents in the Caribbean. Can you talk about that and how important travel agents are to your growth in St Kitts?
I think a lot of us — I always knew their importance, but I think we saw the importance during Covid and after Covid, how reliable they are. And I think travel agents could be the key to promoting the destination because they can be our ambassadors.
When you work with a travel agent and educate them and give them the tools that they need to promote your destination, they’ll keep on recommending and keep on selling it. I’m a big advocate for working with travel agents but it’s all about educating them, giving them the tools that they need and always engaging them because travel agents, once you’re there to support them, they will support you.
So as you said, I’m a big advocate for them. I love working with my travel agent partners because they will work with you. So we teach them the destination first and then the hotels will come, because the client has to stay somewhere.
We just launched a new program for them recently, the SKY program, or St Kitts Your Way, and it was just a way for them to come and experience the island on their own. We provide some tools, let them know what to do, where to grow, and then they can then go back and sell St Kitts — because through my network of travel agents, a lot of them have never sold St Kitts. They know very little about the island, so it’s about all of us experiencing and putting on some more FAM trips. We will do some destination FAM trips, but for now, we want to let them come on their own and we’ll facilitate them while they want to come to the island. Because again, with travel agents, you see the ROI.
St. Kitts has had a strong event history, especially with the Music Festival. Do you see more growth in that area?
Yes. The music festival was amazing and it’s one of the leading festivals in the Caribbean or even the world. Our hotels are ful. The airline actually puts in more flights for that week [of the festival]. And we feel that there is more that could be done for clients to enjoy the destination. We don’t want them to come just for the music festival, we want them to come and explore the island and then, oh by the way, there is this music festival happening as well. So we want it to be that they come to experience the destination, that the music festival is just the icing on the cake.
Who is the the typical visitor to St Kitts right now and how is that evolving?
The typical visitor for St Kitts is the more mature client. St Kitts is known as a luxury destination, so you typically find a client who has the disposable income. I think that will change with us doing a lot more social media, and with Gen X and millennials seeing how Instagrammable our destination is, for example. We have the Marriott and the Park Hyatt, which is more family based, but we’ll see a little bit more solo travelers as well because influencers tend to travel on their own to do the content. So I think that will bring in a different type of clientele, a younger clientele to the island.
Where would you like to see St. Kitts a couple of years from now? What would you like to see the island become?
I would love to see St Kitts being an all-year-round destination and having no absolutely no shoulder period. When it comes to airlift, we would have a little bit more airlift, more nonstop airlift from major markets in the US like we already have with Atlanta.
I would love to see how something out of Boston or the Midwest, something out of the West Coast. The idea is to have arrivals throughout the year, because tourism is our number one revenue generator and having a shoulder period affects our people. So being able to do all year round, having visitors all year round with 90, 100 percent load factor on the airlines or all year round is something I would love to see.