St. Kitts Punches Above Its Weight at Routes Americas

"It is a great honor to receive this award from the airlines," said the Hon. Mr. Lindsay F.P. Grant, Minister of Tourism, International Trade, Industry and Commerce. "Air service is key to the development of our tourism product, so to have the carriers themselves vote for us is truly a testament to the success of our strategic route development and airlift marketing."

"Earning the 'Highly Commended' award is an exceptional accomplishment for St. Kitts and we are very grateful to the airlines for this accolade," said Nick Menon, Chairman of the Board of the St. Kitts Tourism Authority.

"I am extremely pleased that St. Kitts has achieved this distinction from airlines and their network planners," said Racquel Brown, CEO of the St. Kitts Tourism Authority. "We have worked hard to continue to increase airlift year over year from key gateways and develop and maintain our relationships with all the legacy carriers servicing St. Kitts. Having our efforts recognized by them but also by airlines who were judges that do not currently service St. Kitts demonstrates that our airline strategy and destination marketing are outstanding, therefore this award is a remarkable accomplishment. Although St. Kitts & Nevis is the smallest independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, achieving this award clearly demonstrates that we can compete on a much larger scale."

The Routes Americas 2018 Marketing Awards winners and highly commended organizations (runners up) were announced during a ceremony at the Routes Americas Networking Evening on Wednesday, February 14 in Quito, Ecuador. Further to St. Kitts, the other Destination category finalists in the Awards included Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc., Charleston Area CVB, Hawaii Tourism Authority, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (Destination Award winner) and San Diego Tourism Authority.

Destination finalists were determined by the votes of airline network planners. All destination finalists were required provide details about their marketing activities. These submissions were then reviewed by a panel of industry expert judges from the airlines to determine the winners. The judges for the Destination category included: Max Barrus, Manager, Scheduling, Allegiant Air; Barbara Acosta, Head of Strategy & Network Planning, Volaris; Rafael Moreira Mello Araujo, Network Planning Manager, GOL; Steven Swan, Director International Planning & Airline Partnerships, Southwest; and Eric Friedman, Manager, Route Planning, JetBlue Airways. St. Kitts' submission can be viewed on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wJyhWZQ2dhY.

The annual Routes Marketing Awards recognize excellence in airport and destination marketing. They are highly regarded as the most prestigious awards in the aviation industry as they are voted for and judged by the airline network planning community. Airlines voted for the marketing services that support the successful launch of new routes or the development of existing ones, and were instructed to vote for the organizations whose marketing efforts over the last 12 months made a real impact on their future network development plans.

The St. Kitts Tourism Authority extends its sincerest thanks to all marketing partners who helped make earning this award possible. This includes our airline partners, media partners, airline vacation travel agents, magazine partners and our all of our agencies.

About Routes

The Routes business is focused entirely on aviation route development and the company's portfolio includes events, media and online businesses. The company organises and operates world-renowned airline and airport networking events through its regional and World Route Development Forums. They are held in key markets throughout the year in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Routes was founded in 1995 and is part of the EMEA division of UBM plc. For more information, visit www.routesonline.com.