72 July 2015 - Business View Caribbean
2008, one of the things I was charged with looking at
was the marketing budget. I’m an accounting person,
by profession. And the change we made, almost im-
mediately, was to go away from the traditional print
advertising and go more towards online marketing
and social media. We have 44,000 fans on Facebook,
we’re on Instagram, we’re on YouTube, we’re every-
where. And we use that as a key part of our marketing
strategy - Google, Yahoo, Pinterest, Instagram and Tri-
padvisor. We are able to cast a wide net, but we’re also
able to geo-target and zero in the markets that matter
most to us. So we do a lot of targeted advertising to
the demographic that we think is most appropriate for
our property.
“We are particularly good at capturing the Caribbean
market. We believe that regardless of where you’re
from, and how you look, and how much money some-
one might think you have, when you come here on a
vacation, you’ve saved up your money and you deserve
the best service. And we provided that level of service
and deliberately targeted that underserved market –
the Caribbean Diaspora, African-Americans, people
who felt, sometimes, that they were not necessarily
treated as well as guests from North America and Eu-
rope, and so on. The vast majority of arrivals from the
Caribbean choose us over any other hotel.
Sanovnik’s methods have paid off handsomely: “What
has really improved over the last few years are the rates
that we are able to attract because of our marketing
strategy and the improvements that we continuously
make to the property.” In 2013, the property group won
an award for Marketing Excellence from the St. Lucia
Chamber of Commerce. In 2014, Bay Gardens Limited
was named Business of the Year by the Chamber and
its Managing Director, Joyce Destang was named En-
trepreneur of the Year. In 2015 it snatched the Busi-
ness of the Year Award for an unprecedented second
time, while also regaining the Marketing Excellence
Award for the second time in three years. To cap off
an incredible year of awards for the Group Sanovnik
