SANDALS SAINT LUCIA CONDEMNS DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION

The following was released by Sandals on Monday (today):

We wish to strongly condemn the very unfortunate attempt by an individual to promote misinformation about the staff and guests at Sandals Resorts in Saint Lucia via a social media voice note, maliciously alleging that there is an outbreak of COVID-19 on resort.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and we effusively deny these baseless rumours. There is also no record that any person working at either of the Sandals Resorts now open has contracted COVID-19, as is being claimed.

Sandals has implemented very strict and all-encompassing standards of hygiene and best practice at all our resorts through our highly acclaimed Sandals Platinum Protocols of Cleanliness. These Protocols were established with guidance from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) and by working in close coordination with the health authorities on all the islands where we operate.

Sandals places the very highest priority on the health and safety of not only our team members and guests but the wider society and will never do anything that will jeopardise this.

The reality is that the travel and tourism sector, a key economic pillar on which so many islands depend including Saint Lucia, continues to reel under the shutdowns brought about by this pandemic. We have been proud to join with several hard-working, patriotic and caring stakeholders in Saint Lucia over the past few months to implement measures to help reopen the sector, to try and get economic activity restarted and to try and protect not just the lives, but the livelihoods of the people of Saint Lucia.

Thankfully we have made progress, which means that thousands of hospitality workers have been able to return to work. Taxi drivers, farmers, tour operators and many others who depend on the tourism sector have once more been able to earn a living and take care of their families in these uncertain times. However we are not out of the woods as yet and it is a daily battle to maintain the gains we have made. Those hard-fought gains however can easily be jeopardised by devious, unfounded and baseless rumours, particularly from persons who should know better.

As societies the world over remain traumatized by the coronavirus, the damage that can be done to the entire hotel sector, the society as well as the very image of Saint Lucia by propagating such falsehoods can be devastating.

Sandals wishes to assure the people and authorities of Saint Lucia that we will continue to do our utmost, as we have done for over 27 years, to ensure that their best interest always comes first and foremost.