TTG Features This week in Features
Weddings & honeymoons: Flash weddings – handy tips for wedding photography, including commission-earning potential and creative ideas p43; We speak to two agents fresh
from a wedding-themed fam trip to Malta with Belleair Holidays p46; Agent Tracie Ruffell helps a client spring a surprise wedding in New York p49
BARBADOS & ST LUCIA
ON OUR RADAR
PIPPA JACKS
The chief executive of Elegant Hotels Group was in London last week to talk about plans to give Barbados’s best-loved boutique hotel a
makeover costing close to $2 million this summer. Howard Friedman said improvements to the 34 guestrooms at The House (pictured upper right) would bring them more in line with the “contemporary but comfortable” style of the hotel’s public areas, by adding French doors, custom- made wooden furniture, granite bathroom countertops and rain-showers. “We’re using a local Bajan sculpture who makes incredible carvings from uprooted tree trunks – it’s these touches that will make the guestrooms very much Barbados-flavoured,” he told me. The renovation work began last week and will be complete by September 30, but the hotel will remain open throughout. Friedman also revealed that the restaurant at Colony Club is to be
overhauled, potentially by November. “We want to give it a bit of an edge without going over the top, and we’ve just employed a designer who’s started on some sketches,” he said. When Almond Resorts closed its Beach Village property in April, Elegant became the largest hotel group on the island, with 500 rooms across five hotels. According to Sylvia Scholey, vice-president of sales, marketing and ecommerce, it’s the group’s continued investment in its properties that is helping it remain strong in tough conditions. “We’re 20% up across the group compared with last year – and our two all-inclusive hotels, Turtle Beach and Crystal Cove, are absolutely flying, up as much as 50%,” she reported.
Agents who win a place on this
year’s Gimme 5 & Fly fam trip (
ttgdigital.com/gimme5) in June will have chance to stay at Tamarind by Elegant Hotels, which underwent a multimillion dollar facelift in 2010. You have until May 30 to log five Barbados bookings with BA, so get cracking!
KATHERINE LAWREY
It’s hard to imagine a more perfect setting in which to listen to live music than Pigeon Island, host venue for St Lucia Jazz. The main stage sits in a
dip, so the view from the grassy slopes is immense. Tumbledown forts provide clues to the island’s military past and an azure sea rings the island, barring a causeway connecting it to the mainland. I was lucky enough to see Diana Ross (right) and Toni Braxton perform in this setting, when I caught the final day of the annual two-week festival on a trip to the island last week. Both ladies were resplendent, belting out hits between numerous costume changes into progressively more flamboyant outfits. Adding St Lucia Jazz on to a Caribbean beach break could not be easier, with many hotels in the north providing tickets and transfers for guests. You can also book tickets online (
stluciajazz.org). And with big name acts guaranteed, it’s a great way to listen to top-class music in an intimate, family-friendly setting.
To read blogs and reviews from the TTGfeatures team, see
ttgdigital.com/featurettes
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