Sanovnik Destang

Sanovnik Destang is the Executive Director and shareholder of Bay Gardens Resorts. This Chartered Accountant and Chartered Financial Analyst has helped engineer a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of Bay Gardens, using a digital marketing strategy focused on encouraging better yielding direct bookings. He has earned numerous awards including St. Lucia’s Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Business of the Year Award’ for two consecutive years, Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment Summit 2014 Rising Star Award and was recognized by Caribjournal as Caribbean Hotelier of the Year from in 2022. He is the Past President of St. Lucia Hospitality and Tourism Association and is currently the 1st Vice President of the CHTA where serves as the Chairman of their Technology Task Force. He has held positions on numerous boards, locally and regionally.

Sanovnik Destang is the Executive Director and a Shareholder of Bay Gardens Resorts, a group of locally owned hotels in Saint Lucia consisting of 233 rooms, 7 conference rooms and 5 restaurants across four hotels and luxury villas all located in St. Lucia’s entertainment capital, Rodney Bay Village. 

A Chartered Accountant (CA) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Sanovnik spent 4 years working at KPMG in Toronto working in the fields of Audit and Business Advisory prior to returning to St. Lucia in 2008 to lead the family owned business. 

Sanovnik helped to engineer a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the Bay Gardens chain using a digital marketing strategy focused on encouraging better yielding direct bookings. This combined with a focus on cost containment while maintaining and even growing employment levels helped to drive the business towards sustained growth, profitability and numerous awards including the St. Lucia Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year Award for an unprecedented two years in a row (2014, 2015). 

Sanovnik is a Past President of the St. Lucia Hospitality and Tourism Association having previously served as the President of the Association from February 2016 to July 2018. As President of the Association he played a pivotal role in leading many advocacy efforts on several important matters including the Sharing Economy, Taxation and Alternative Energy.

He played a pivotal role on expanding the Association’s efforts in the fields of Linkages and People Development with the establishment of the award winning Virtual Agricultural Clearing House and the SLHTA Young Leaders Initiative. Both initiatives were financed by the SLHTA’s Tourism Enhancement Fund which he has served on the Board of Trustees of since 2014 (including 2 years as its first Chairman from 2014-2016).

He is a current 1st Vice President, Director and former Regional Vice President of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA). As a CHTA Director he played a pivotal role in the thought process behind the CHTA’s position paper on the Sharing Economy and currently chairs the association’s Technology Task Force.

Sanovnik has also served as a Director on the board of the Saint Lucia Development Bank, a Director and member of the Marketing Committee at the Saint Lucia Tourist Board, Deputy Chairman of the Youth Enterprise Equity Fund, Member of the Investment Committee at the National Insurance Corporation Saint Lucia and is currently a Director of Fort Young Hotel in Dominica.

Sanovnik is a graduate of the Schulich School of Business at York University where he obtained a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and was awarded the Alan and Esther Hockin Award for graduating with the highest GPA in the faculty. Sanovnik was also the winner of the Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment Summit (CHRIS) Rising Star Award in 2014, Caribjournal Caribbean Hotelier of the Year in 2022 and was recognized by the International Hospitality Institute as one of the Global Top 20 Hospitality Executives to watch in 2022.