ST. LUCIA – Leading St Lucia Photographer Kirk Elliott, was recently awarded a Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence for The St Lucia Photo Tour.
The award comes just one year after Elliott started the St Lucia Photo Tour as a way to share the best of his St Lucia with visitors while calling on his 20+ years of commercial photography experience to help them get the most out of their digital cameras. This tour is different from any other St Lucia tour by virtue of its hands on educational component taught in the everyday local places Elliott introduces photo enthusiasts to and invites them to photograph. Places like the Castries Fish Market with fish vendors plying their trade and the Hardest Hard Restaurant for a truly authentic St Lucian lunch. Elliott describes the St Lucia Photo Tour as a cultural immersion intertwined with real world advanced photography training.
And judging from the overwhelming 5 star reviews patrons have posted on Trip Advisor the St Lucia Photo Tour has definitely struck a chord with many happy visitors:
“…We were amateurs who have taken a Canon Beginners’ class and learned more on our tour with Kirk in a few hours than we did at our all day Canon class.” … Molly Mc Dowell, USA
“Best Refresher in the Best Place with the Best Person thanks to Kirk” … Stephen Mc Closkey, USA
“After reading the reviews about Kirk’s Photo Tour it became evident that St Lucia was our priority and we were very thrilled at the prospect of learning from Kirk.” … Jean Strang, Canada
In fact Strang explained to Elliott that she and her husband had initially planned to vacation in Barbados and eventually choose St Lucia because they simply had to do the photo tour.
The full list of nearly 100 Trip Advisor reviews can be found at http://StLuciaByKirk.com/Reviews and the actual photo tour description can be seen at http://StLuciaByKirk.com/st-lucia-photo-tour
“Most vacationers have sophisticated digital cameras which they use in the auto mode simply because they are daunted by the sheer number of buttons on today’s digital cameras” explained Elliott when asked what inspired him to create this tour. “The idea to list the tour on Trip Advisor came out of a workshop conducted by the St Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association (SLHTA) to help its members make the most of online marketing for their businesses” Elliott explained, “…and starting a Trip Advisor listing is one of the best things I ever did” he continued.
Elliot is strategic in his selection of the “keywords” used to attract visitors to his website and comments that it is part science and part art – “or more like magic”, determining what exact terms resonate with website visitors and what are the emotional trigger words and phrases that influence them to book a tour and pay in full well in advance of their arrival in St Lucia. Elliott has studied the art of effective web copywriting as a means to connect emotionally with his website visitors, lead them to the conclusion that the St Lucia Photo Tour is an absolute must do St Lucia excursion. He then over-delivers on his training and user experience promises when he finally spends the day with photo enthusiasts on the photo tour.
The St Lucia Photo Tour provides employment for a small team and Elliott plans to start an online version of his unique brand of photographic training. This will allow him to hire even more young St Lucians as he makes the photo tour available to people all over the world rather than just visitors to St Lucia. When asked about the potential of the internet to grow other local tourism businesses Elliott explained: “To benefit from the multibillion dollar world of online business it is vitally important that here in St Lucia we become creators of content for consumption by an information hungry world and not just remain consumers of content created by others.”
Elliott salutes the efforts of the SLHTA to assist its members and would like to see both the government and other private sector organizations devote more resources to helping more local entrepreneurs develop effective online components of their businesses as a pathway towards the eradication of poverty in the first instance followed by wealth creation as a natural progression that will help grow our local economy.
Elliott congratulates all of the other local businesses that received Trip Advisor Certificates of Excellence, as well as those that made it into the Trip Advisor Hall of Fame. Elliott concluded by expressing thanks to all of the visitors who have done the St Lucia Photo Tour as well as those who had taken time out of their schedules to post a review on Trip Advisor. “I am passionate about sharing my knowledge of photography and my love for St Lucia with people all over the world and I am on a mission to help people everywhere create better photography than they ever dreamed possible” said Elliott in parting.
Kirk Elliott is a St Lucia Photographer who is passionate about photography and St Lucia and is on a mission to share St Lucia’s stunningly spectacular beauty with visitors to the island while at the same time working to rid the world of bad photography – One photo enthusiast at a time
Sample Works by Kirk Elliott:
