NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (May 11, 2022) — An official of the Ministry of Tourism in the Nevis Island Administration says the ministry stands ready to ensure that the Bath Community Festival which was held on May 07, 2022 at the historic Fort Charles takes root.

Mr. John Hanley, Permanent Secretary in the ministry, was commenting on the success and participation of the first festival of its kind in Bath Village which formed part of the Ministry of Tourism’s calendar of activities for its ongoing annual Tourism Awareness Month in May dubbed Exposition Nevis. This year’s theme is “Re-thinking Nevisian Tourism.”

“When we did our training at Bath community, one of the reasons this was selected as the pilot as the very first community-based training was because of how rich the Bath community was in terms of the heritage sites – Bath Hotel, Bath Stream, Fort Charles, Gallows Bay, Government House – so we have a wide variety of places that people can see. Plus, we have very rich cuisine in the area. A lot of persons are bakers. A lot of persons are very good at cooking, people like Black Hat and so on.

“So it’s a very rich area that can really thrive very solidly on community-based tourism but in order for us to succeed, the community has to meet us halfway. We have to feel the enthusiasm of the Bath community. The Ministry of Tourism is ready and willing to work and we will continue to do everything in our power to make sure that this works,” he said.

Mr. Hanley expressed hope that in time the Bath Community Festival would become as appealing to villagers and the public as the annual Nevisian Heritage Village Open Day, an activity which also forms part of Exposition Nevis.

He added that the festival was is in its early stages, and was staged in an effort to further the ministry’s thrust in the development of community-based tourism in Nevis.

“The Bath Community Festival is part and parcel of what we do at the Ministry of Tourism in terms of community-based tourism. Community-based tourism is where the people in the community have an idea or they own a festival or something like that and they run with it.

“So we have had training with the Bath community just before COVID and this is a sort of follow up that the ministry has had with these persons. So we are doing this as a sort of stimulus. We want them to be encouraged to launch out on their own and to do things but we wanted to set a template so that they can do this on their own,” he said.