No Passports Required by French Visitors to Saint Lucia

Contact: Rose Marie Harris

Saint Lucia may well record marked increases in French nationals visiting the country.  The Cabinet of Ministers has approved a request from the Ministry of Tourism that would allow French nationals to enter Saint Lucia with any form of picture identification rather than a passport.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism Mc Hale Andrew explains that over the last two years there has been a serious decline in visitor arrival from the French territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe.  According to Andrew, in 1999 Saint Lucia recorded an average of twenty three thousand visitors from the French territories, but in 2000 that amount declined to some eleven thousand.

Andrew explained that the ministry has had “unsubstantiated” reports that indicate that the decline was linked to the recent reintroduction of passport requirements for French visitors.   He said that many potential French visitors to Saint Lucia are not in possession of a passport and so the requirement for them to travel with passports would have been a very serious hindrance to their traveling to Saint Lucia.

“The fact of the matter is that most French visitors (from the Caribbean) usually travel to French territories and to the mainland – France - and in those instances they do not require passports to travel to those territories and so it is in that context that we proposed that Cabinet look at the possibility of waiving that requirement for passport for French nationals (entering St. Lucia),” Andrew added.

The tourism official says while this waiver may see an increase in French visitor arrivals, there needs to be some monitoring by tourism officials to determine whether the waiver will have a direct impact on increased arrivals.  

“Actually Martinique and Guadeloupe comprise seven percent of our stay over arrivals.  That may seem small but it is thirty percent of our Caribbean market. More importantly the guesthouse subsector relies very heavily on the French Market.  Small hotels and guesthouses in particular rely heavily on the weekend travelers from Martinique and Guadeloupe for their survival and several of them have indicated that their properties have experienced higher room occupancies when French nationals were at some time allowed entry into Saint Lucia with their identification cards,” Andrew said.

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