The Shortlist

Two years, that's how long it took us to go through the 18 Caribbean countries initially selected as potential destinations and to shortlist them down to the most suitable ones for our project.

During this time, we faced the difficult consequences of the pandemic restrictions but now we are seeing the energy people are putting in forgetting Covid-19 and moving forward from here. Such an enthusiastic restart is causing economical problems like heavy inflation due to shortage of resources and on top of htat everything is complicated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Still the spirit of people remains extremely positive. It seems that the pandemic made us more resilient and less concerned about the uncertainties of the future.

But now let’s go back to our shortlist.

Two thirds of the original list have been discarded for various reasons which means we are now with 6 countries left.

The places we have excluded are fantastic and in many aspects wonderful destinations but they simply are not matching our own project idea and, in some cases, also our budget.

And here the chosen ones:

• Antigua & Barbuda
• Aruba
• Bonaire
• Curacao
• Dominica
• Saint Vincent & Grenadines

So the Dutch "ABC" islands plus other 3 other interesting Caribbean countries which may not be in the touristic mainstream but they have a good potential for a sustainable touristic development.

Within these Dutch Antilles, Curacao would be the first choice because between those three today it is the best compromise between quality of diving and real estate cost.

Instead Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Vincent & Grenadines are almost equal in term of preference, in fact their pros and cons are somehow balancing between each other but in general the more south the better because there are smaller chance of being hit by heavy hurricanes.

So in the end our first choices are: Curacao and Saint Vincent & Grenadines.

Curacao would be the easy choice with limited challenges for settleing in but with limited margins to create something really sustainable and out of the mainstream, even though definetly possible.

Saint Vincent instead would be much more challenging but also with more opportunities in building a sustainable activity, focusing more on experiencing the natural environment because, at the present, the tourism has not been developed that much yet.

Not an easy choice to make but we have some years in front to think, to evaluate all the details and actually to go a visit Saint Vincent and Grenadines. That will be a great trip to plan and trying to do it as sustainable as possible would be the challenge....a little project on its own. Ready?