MINISTER GRANT SAID ST. KITTS & NEVIS UNDERWENT EXTENSIVE PREPARATION WITH PHASE 1 PLAN TO RE-INTRODUCE TOURISM

Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 18, 2020 (SKNIS): Minister of Tourism, Transport and Ports, the Honourable Lindsay Grant, said that the Ministry of Tourism’s underwent extensive preparation with its Phase One Plan to re-introduce tourism to the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis in a COVID-19 world.  

Speaking in the National Assembly on November 17, Minister Grant said that St. Kitts & Nevis’ borders were re-opened to welcome visitors from around the world after a seven-month closure, which was implemented to help curb the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“We have been preparing for this for a very long time working with our medical professionals to develop a two-phase plan to allow us to safely and responsibly open,” he said.

“We established specific entry and travel requirements for our visitors. We developed protocols to keep our frontline workers, our citizens, and our residents safe, and conducted training for our stakeholders in every single sector of the industry in those health and safety protocols,” Minister Grant said.

Additionally, “we created a travel approved program which awards a travel approved certificate and seal for stakeholders successfully completing the training and inspection of their operations, respectively,” he said.

“Mr. Speaker, we collaborated with our airline partners to establish our airlift schedule for November, including American Airlines service from Miami, Seaborne service from San Juan, and starting this past Saturday, Winair service from St. Maarten. For the month of November, all airlines will operate weekly Saturday service,” said Minister Grant.

 “As Phase One continues, I am very pleased to report 4314 persons out of 5000 in the Tourism Industry have completed the Travel Approved training at no expense to the individual,” he mentioned. -30-