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Daily Telegraph (Filed: 09/09/2006)
Runs, rum and reggae put this isle in the mood for a great
innings
Tourist
industry will know no bounds when cricket arrives, says Max Davidson
On the only two occasions I have been to St Lucia, the rain has
bucketed down so hard I took it as a personal insult.
But it is an incredibly beautiful island, come rain or shine:
palm-fringed beaches; a wooded, mountainous hinterland for those
who enjoy a more rugged kind of tropical scenery.
Although the island is less densely populated than some of its
neighbours, it 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."
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