The op-ed shared by the Hotel & Tourism Association last week is gaining traction both locally and regionally. The piece was shared by the Virgin Islands Consortium and VisitStCroix.com, and prompted an interview for a piece by the St. Thomas Source. Click the news links below to view.

Viya proves its position as the Virgin Islands’ leader in telecommunications by receiving the prestigious “Fastest Broadband Internet” award from Ookla, the global leader in fixed broadband testing.* Ookla has the most comprehensive analytics on internet performance, and only grants these awards to top telecommunication providers worldwide. Viya’s out-performed the competition in thousands of tests taken by Virgin Islanders on the Ookla Speedtest® application from the Q2-Q3 2020 performance data tests. Remarkably, this award is for a period during the pandemic when having the most reliable high-speed internet connection was an absolute necessity. Read more.

SEAT Caribbean's vision of a women's business accelerator program (proposed for the Caribbean Innovation Challenge which was sponsored by Micromentor and Bacardi) has come to fruition as a result of partial funding from the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands. We are piloting our Three Queens Ventures women's business accelerator. Three Queens Ventures first initiative will focus on women entrepreneurs in the Creative Arts (artists, photographers, craft makers, designers (jewelry), small batch manufacturers, whose product line is made and manufactured in the USVI). We're very excited to get started and are in the applicant recruiting stage. For more details about Three Queens Ventures, go to https://www.seatcaribbean.com/three-queens-ventures.

Another way USVIHTA is working for our members! Order Genie is a contactless mobile ordering platform for hotel guest services that enhances guest experience and safety while boosting revenue for the hotel. The platform allows guests to place all food & beverage orders, and make any guest services requests, all from a single location: their mobile phone.

Now guests can order anything, from anywhere, anytime throughout their stay. Restaurant & cafe ordering, housekeeping, valet, concierge questions, maintenance issues and front desk requests such as toiletries, towels or bottled water. All they have to do is scan the hotel's custom QR code or text the dedicated number for easy access to the web-based platform. There are no apps, no downloads and no logins.

In the post-COVID world, this contactless technology is a critical safety tool for eliminating lines and crowding in common spaces, and stops the spread of germs by using cashless payments. The hotel can display the QR code at the front desk, in guest rooms and anywhere throughout the property to continuously encourage guests to order from anywhere they are, greatly increasing revenue for the hotel.

The platform also streamlines operations for the hotel by consolidating all guest services requests to a single location, where the hotel can monitor and resolve all tickets right from their web browser. Tickets are automatically distributed to the correct department so that teams only see tickets that pertain to them, which greatly improves ticket resolution times and increases positive reviews.

It's incredibly simple for the hotel to implement, there's no additional hardware required and no need to change any current software. It integrates directly into the hotel's current Point Of Sale system and payment processor.

Order Genie is entirely free to the hotel, we only charge a convenience fee to the guest on every monetary transaction that happens on the platform, which the hotel can easily opt to split with the guest or cover the fee entirely instead. Read more.

The Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands (CFVI) has awarded grants to 18 USVI nonprofit organizations for a total of $1,480,735 in funding. Grant funds will be used to support ongoing hurricane recovery, revitalization and building forward efforts to enhance the wellbeing of residents and ecosystems across the territory. Read more.