Title: Preface (Page 3) Why did we choose St. Vincent over the other islands? The second reason was that it wasn't a "tourist island". .
That may sound self-contradictory. After all, we would be tourists ourselves, wouldn't we? And we wouldn't want to be somewhere that was hostile to tourists; or was without facilities for tourists.
But there is a difference in attitude, if nothing else. The islands that are primarily concerned with tourism to the exclusion of other ways of earning a national income, inevitably regard the tourists more as an economic resource rather than people with whom to share experiences. That may happen to St. Vincent as the more developed nations marginalize the smaller ones to make exploitation easier; but St. Vincent still has the attitude it had when we first came and it was primarily an agricultural economy; an attitude that appreciated our admiration of their beautiful island but didn't change their lifestyle to accomodate us.
After almost a decade of residence we take a lot of things for granted: the markets are for our weekly shopping, the beaches for our daily swim. They are not there simply to stare at in amazement, they are part of our normal life. And while we often go out to view favorite places, there are places that we may not visit from one year to the next.
But there are always new things to see and new, generally friendly people to meet, and the attitude is still pretty relaxed. It is still an island where people primarily live their own lives rather than primarily living in order to cater to the whims of tourists.
In other words Vincentians are real people and we like that.
Third, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has a significant history.