Business View Caribbean - July 2016 43
leadership, Bay Gardens ultimately returned to profit-
ability using a combination of innovative online mar-
keting methods and the targeting of specific groups of
guests. It also began receiving more and more favor-
able recognition from travel sites and business groups,
and today Bay Gardens is considered one of the pre-
mier, locally-owned hotels on St. Lucia.
Never content, though, to sit on its laurels, the Bay
Gardens group is constantly updating, innovating, and
improving its portfolio of guest services. The last time
Business View Magazine spoke with Sanovnik Des-
tang, he related how the Resort was getting ready to
open a brand new water feature - Splash Island Water
Park St. Lucia – designed and operated by his wife,
Julianna Ward-Destang. We recently caught up with
Destang to find out more about the water park and
everything else that is happening these days at Bay
Gardens.
“The water park opened in August 2015,” he says, “and
we had four thousand customers in our first month –
locals, guests, and visitors from other properties. And
it’s pushing twenty thousand people since it opened.”
Destang remarks that the park has made the hotel a
property of choice for the family market, while at the
same time attracting adult groups who want to utilize
the park’s unique features for team-building exercises.
“This is not a normal water park,” says Destang. “It’s
an inflatable, floating water park that actually sits on
the water. And it’s an obstacle course – monkey bars,
trampolines, and all kinds of obstacles that you have
to get through to complete the course.” He remains
somewhat surprised that the park is so unique to the
Caribbean region. “There are 200 of them around the
world,” he muses, “but ours is the first one in the Ca-
ribbean. These parks are in Europe, they are in Asia,
they’re all over the place except the Caribbean where
