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18/10/06 -
Tourism set to continue to rise in St Lucia |
Although the island is less densely populated than some
of its neighbours, St Lucia has a pretty well-developed tourist industry which is about to take off big time,
kick-started by the 2007 Cricket World Cup, when England's 10,000-strong Barmy Army of travelling fans will descend
on St Lucia for sun, sand, rum, reggae and the occasional thwack of leather on willow. Developers have glimpsed a
real window of opportunity and, with the St Lucia government offering selected tax breaks, have been building
everything from traditional beachside villas to exotic boutique hotels tucked away in some of the island's many
secluded beauty spots, such as Calabash Cove, pictured on the cover.
If, as seems increasingly likely, Barbados starts to succumb to development fatigue, St Lucia is ready to slug it
out with Antigua for the tag of Best of the Rest among British holidaymakers and second-home owners.
Not all of the development is sympathetic. There are one or two lurid eyesores, particularly in the popular Rodney
Bay area.
And watch out for slick promotional brochures featuring virgin-sand beach scenes photographed hundreds of miles from
St Lucia. But there is good stuff on the market and, if you love the Caribbean, with its lazy, unkempt charm, you
can hardly fail to warm to St Lucia, which has all those qualities and more.
One of the most striking things about the island is how quickly it seems to be moving upmarket despite recent
publicity about the violence on the island. In the Nineties, St Lucia was pretty much associated with three-star
hotels and apartments: pleasant bolt-holes, but nothing flash.
Now it is the top end of the market where there is the greatest activity, with a raft of tempting part-ownership
options for people who want to spend a few weeks a year in St Lucia, then earn rental income the rest of the time.
When I first visited St Lucia, in 1992, it was still what it had been for years: an island dominated, economically,
by its banana industry.
Bulging banana boats plied the route from the Caribbean to Britain. Now you are likely to see the banana groves
hacked down to make room for Greg Norman-designed golf courses or state-of-the-art spas. The villas at the Jalousie
Plantation, on the west coast, are typical of the new-look St Lucia.
Situated between the twin peaks of the famous Pitons, one of the most breath-taking views in the whole Caribbean,
the renovated villas are furnished to the highest standards and, thanks to a mandatory "rental pool agreement",
offer outstanding investment potential as well as a dreamy setting for an away-from-it-all tropical holiday.
The basic deal is that you purchase a villa - prices start at £270,000 - which you are then entitled to occupy for a
minimum of four weeks in any 12-month period.
The rest of the time it is let, with a predicted return on investment (ROI) of between six and seven per cent based
on 80 per cent occupancy.
The bottom-line arithmetic is certainly compelling enough to have tempted David and Jane Purchase, from Oxfordshire,
to take the plunge. Although they are widely travelled, it is the first time they have invested in property outside
the UK. But St Lucia seemed to tick most of the right boxes.
"The island has a common law system, which simplifies property-buying, and is also stable politically," says David,
a media consultant. "We checked out Jamaica, but were not sure it had the same degree of stability. The closeness of
the Caribbean to America is also important if you want to maximise your rental income."
At Jalousie, where they have bought a villa off-plan for £295,000, it was the fact that the villas were being
re-designed by the renowned architect Lane Pettifer that proved one of the clinchers.
"He knows how to use high-quality local materials to create an authentic Caribbean feel. How much time will we spend
at Jalousie ourselves? I am not sure. We have bought the villa mainly as an investment but it can't be bad having a
World Heritage Site like the Pitons on your doorstep, can it? It is one of the most stunning locations I have seen
anywhere."View our St
Lucia property portfolio here |
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