Tourism Legends Awards: Lucius Joseph
During its 2025 Annual General Meeting on Friday, March 28th 2025 the SLHTA awarded Lucius Joseph with a Tourism Legends Award, in appreciation of his many years of dedicated service, devotion and commitment to the hospitality and tourism industry.
Lucius Joseph began his career in the industry in 1970 as a Night Auditor at the St. Lucia Beach Hotel. He then joined the Holiday Inn in the same role before being promoted to Assistant Front Office Manager.
From there, he moved to the newly opened Steigenberger Cariblue Hotel in 1973, once again serving as the Night Auditor and Front Office Reservations. (For those who may not know, The Steingerber Cariblue Hotel is now The Body Holiday). Cariblue as it was called for short was German owned and 98% of their clients were German Speaking and coming out of Germany. Cariblue focused on ensuring that several of their team members were able to speak and write the German language. Consequently, you will find that several St. Lucians irrespective of the level that they operated at within the hotel spoke German.
Lucius underwent his Hospitality Training in Frankfurter Hof Hotel in Frankfurt Main and at Ritters Park Hotel in Bad Homburg, West Germany. To enhance his German Speaking skills he attended Inlingua Sparchschule in Frankfurt.
In 1980, he launched his own touring company , Joseph’s Touring Service where he represented and serviced clients from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. To better service his clients he bought a High Roof Air Conditioned bus or so he thought as the air conditioning only reached the clients who sat to the front of the bus and those in the back had to open the windows. So technically, this air conditioned bus was only half airconditioned. You can well imagine the difficulty that he went through with only half of the bus being airconditioned. The Local Dealer for the vehicles refused to bring in a fully Air Conditioned bus for him. This I am sure that you find difficult to believe. AC in only a part of the vehicle. The vehicle was a high roof one and so Lucius was continuously mocked and ridiculed and it earned the title of “ Pan Bread.”
He was forced to close his business when East and West Germany came together. Armed with his skills and fluency in the German language he now renders his services as a free-lance Tour Guide to Foster & Ince, Cox and Company , David Tours and does private tours as well.
Today, we celebrate Lucius Joseph for his long-standing contribution to the island’s Tourism Industry.
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