The Saint Lucia Tourism Authority has agreed a five-year partnership with Arsenal Football Club in a deal which covers both the men and women’s teams.
In an exclusive chat with TTG, St Lucia’s deputy prime minister, said the deal to become the club’s official destination partner would lead to “exciting travel industry activations.”
Dr Ernest Hilaire, who also holds the ministerial brief for tourism, investment, creative industries, culture and information, described the newly crowned Premier League champions as the “perfect fit” for the Caribbean destination.
Sports partnerships is not a new area for St Lucia – they’ve already been linked to the New York Yankees (baseball), the Toronto Raptors (basketball), and the Saint Lucia Kings (cricket) in the Caribbean Premier League.
Arsenal have recently ended their destination partnership with Visit Rwanda, allowing St Lucia to step forward. “We’ve seen the power of sports branding,” said Dr Hilaire. “We were looking at the UK market, and when we looked at Arsenal’s profile, its history and the location, we saw it as the perfect fit for us.”
“It did help that quite a few of us are Arsenal supporters,” he smiled, “but from a business perspective, we believe that Arsenal can align with St Lucia more than any other team.”
“And it just so happened that Arsenal were well on their way to winning the Premier League.”
He said the advantages of such a partnership amounted to more than simply tapping into an extensive fan base: “We look at the fact that loyal and faithful supporters create associations with their sporting teams. We believe that a potential visitor who is a supporter of Arsenal, when they start thinking of taking a holiday, they will naturally consider St Lucia because it’s associated with their football team.”
He continued: “Arsenal in our assessment probably have one of the most loyal fan bases from what we’ve seen. They’re rooted in the community, rooted in identity, rooted in culture, and we think their followers would naturally want to consider St Lucia as their destination of choice.”
Committing to a five-year partnership was important, he said: “Doing it for the shorter term and then letting it drop would not really work for us. This is strategic rather than tactical. We want to build connections and long-term associations. If you look at UK travel patterns, people like to plan their travel in advance.”
'This is about attracting investment'
While unwilling to put a figure on the investment, he did confirm that funds had not been diverted from St Lucia’s tourism industry, and he said: “The benefits for us will far outweigh the investment. It’s not just exposure in the stadium, this is about the positioning of St Lucia globally. It’s about nation reputation. It’s about attracting investment. It’s about exports. It’s about our creative industries and our culinary scene.”
He added: “It also gives us an exciting opportunity for activations within the Arsenal space, the community space and the stadium space. It presents the perfect platform for activations that can really create some excitement in the travel industry.”
He also hinted that such a high-profile partnership could incentivise Virgin Atlantic to return St Lucia to its network, after the service was scrapped for winter 2025/2026. “We are working on it, we’re in constant contact with Virgin and we hope very soon we will be able to get something going. It’s a really important partnership for us, and we hope we have some good news soon.”
A further benefit to the partnership is that Arsenal will be setting up an Arsenal in St Lucia, which is open to aspiring footballers in the entire Caribbean. “Arsenal has a very powerful community foundation so there’s lots we’ll be doing in terms of talent development, youth development and social development.
“We believe sports is a very powerful avenue for building youth development.”
Dr Hilaire’s passion for Arsenal dates back to his time as a student in London in the early 1990s and was cemented during the years he spent serving as St Lucia’s High Commissioner to the UK in the 2010s.
“The first time I saw Arsenal Football Club, I knew I belonged to it. Everything about the club was attractive to me and I had to be a part of it.”
