Louis Lewis is The Saint Lucia Tourism Authority’s (SLTA) new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
According to tourism officials, his former experience as a tourism consultant, economist, and data analyst made him an ideal candidate for the role he is contractually obligated to fill for the next three years.
Lewis formerly served as the founding CEO of the Tobago Tourism Agency.
The new CEO’s prior experience includes tourism consultancy for Saint Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos and other regional countries.
He served as the Director of Tourism on the Saint Lucia Tourist Board from 2008 to 2017.
Lewis also served as permanent secretary (PS) in Saint Lucia’s Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation from 2007 – 2008 and as PS in the Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Consumer Affairs for over a year after serving as the Director of Economic Affairs within the same ministry from 2003 to 2006.
Lewis said he knows the challenges most prevalent in the local tourism and global economic and social climate.
The CEO explained that he hopes to use his expertise to create an environment where more Saint Lucians can transition from spectating the tourism industry to becoming “participants and owners”.
“There’s a very interesting statistic that I saw, and I just took two numbers. If you look at the rate of change of visitor expenditure and visitor arrivals, and you look at the rate of change of GDP, there’s a difference. And because of that difference it tells us, while we are growing, not all the nationals are benefiting at the same rate. And we have to close that gap—Close that gap means… getting Saint Lucians to be greater participants [and] beneficiaries of that sector,” Lewis stated at a press conference on Wednesday.
According to the CEO, he intends to utilise scientific and strategic management methods to benefit the tourism sector and the wider public.
SLTA Chairman Thaddeus Antoine shared that the CEO’s appointment came after a lengthy recruitment process.
“In selecting a candidate for CEO, it was one we had to be very careful about,” said Antoine.
The chairman remarked that the tourism authority had been on what he described as a “good trajectory” but recently saw the departure of its previous CEO, Lorine Charles-St. Jules.
“… Having unfortunately lost our CEO we needed to get a CEO that was in a similar stead and was ready to carry out the mantle in continuing the projection and growth of the organisation,” Antoine stated.
He added, “We also recognise as a board that the future of Saint Lucia Tourism lies heavily on understanding data …So for us, the CEO had to be someone very steep in data analysis, steep in information technology, steep in research and artificial intelligence.”
Antoine disclosed that Lewis was selected from a pool of over 25 applicants.
