It is no se­cret; tourism in To­ba­go is not even close to what it was in its hey­day. If pas­sen­ger ar­rivals were to be used as an in­di­ca­tor of the in­dus­try's per­for­mance then the to­tal pas­sen­ger ar­rivals of 32,895 in 2012 com­pared to 2005 when pas­sen­ger ar­rivals peaked at 87,796 paints a gloomy pic­ture. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling since it is es­ti­mat­ed that tourism rep­re­sents some 46 per cent of GDP, 57 per cent of em­ploy­ment and 96 per cent of the is­land's "ex­ports."

Based on these sta­tis­tics, it be­comes abun­dant­ly clear that re­main­ing com­pet­i­tive in this dy­nam­ic in­dus­try is quite the chal­lenge. There have been sev­er­al cries to solve the prob­lems of the in­dus­try but to date there seems to be no true con­sen­sus on what is the root prob­lem fac­ing the is­land's steadi­ly de­clin­ing tourism in­dus­try. From all spheres, of­fices, cor­ners and rum shops the "prob­lem" with tourism in To­ba­go is dis­cussed, de­bat­ed or even preached.

These "prob­lems" range from "the Gov­ern­ment not se­ri­ous" to "we don't have enough things for tourists to do" and "we not ready for Ja­maica and them yet". How­ev­er, what­ev­er "prob­lem" one can iden­ti­fy, the re­al­i­ty ex­ists that the eco­nom­ic val­ue that we ex­tract from the tourism in­dus­try is not near­ly enough giv­en the nat­ur­al re­sources with which we have been be­stowed in this Cap­i­tal of Par­adise.

The rea­son any coun­try opts to op­er­ate with­in any eco­nom­ic in­dus­try, whether agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, min­ing or tourism, is to gen­er­ate in­come. Our prob­lem of alarm­ing­ly de­creas­ing lev­els of in­come from the tourism in­dus­try has many caus­es. Al­though, quite of­ten our my­opic propen­si­ty leads us to con­fuse the prob­lem and its caus­es, the two are dis­tinct and sep­a­rate.

The com­plex and dy­nam­ic na­ture of the tourism in­dus­try means that many fac­tors in any part of the tourism sys­tem, whether in the tourist gen­er­at­ing re­gion, the des­ti­na­tion re­gion, the tran­sit re­gion or the en­vi­ron­ment in which these all cor­re­late, can cause a re­duc­tion in tourism in­come.

These fac­tors which can cause the prob­lem in the tourism in­dus­try in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry trav­el tax­es, the lack of seam­less trans­porta­tion to the des­ti­na­tion, the emer­gence of ad­di­tion­al com­peti­tors, an ap­a­thet­ic lo­cal pop­u­lace, poor ser­vice qual­i­ty, in­ad­e­quate mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment of en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, a poor­ly de­vel­oped and main­tained tourism plant, frac­tious in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments, in­ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing or a down­turn in the glob­al econ­o­my.

At some point one or all of the afore­men­tioned fac­tors have been iden­ti­fied as the "prob­lem" or even the root caus­es of the prob­lem in the tourism in­dus­try. How­ev­er, these fac­tors do not ex­ist in iso­la­tion or in­di­vid­u­al­ly. It is the lim­it­less com­bi­na­tion of these fac­tors that have led to a tourism in­dus­try strug­gling to sus­tain its eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty.

In light of this, it should be­come in­creas­ing­ly ap­par­ent that solv­ing a "prob­lem" brought about by a myr­i­ad of cause and ef­fect re­la­tion­ships in the tourism sys­tem, can­not be done through one-off projects, grand new build­ings of steel and glass, a shiny coat of paint, in­su­lar pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions or oth­er "shot in the arm" ap­proach­es. Solv­ing the prob­lem fac­ing the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go would mean em­ploy­ing a re­spon­si­ble, sys­tem­at­ic and mul­ti-prong ap­proach that is able to counter that mul­ti­tude of caus­es.

This ap­proach should take place in four steps. �2 First­ly, a pol­i­cy for the de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go through tourism should be for­mu­lat­ed. This pol­i­cy should em­brace the tenets of re­spon­si­ble tourism which is, tourism that "cre­ates bet­ter places for peo­ple to live in and bet­ter places to vis­it". Re­spon­si­ble tourism calls on stake­hold­ers to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the tourism in­dus­try and as a re­sult, would fos­ter a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach to tourism de­vel­op­ment on the is­land.

This pol­i­cy will al­so clear­ly iden­ti­fy the suite of prod­ucts of­fered for tourist con­sump­tion, while clear­ly stat­ing that the tourism prod­uct that is for sale is the ex­pe­ri­ence that each vis­i­tor to the is­land en­joys. How­ev­er, this pol­i­cy must be one that is owned by each stake­hold­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lo­cal pop­u­lace. Hav­ing max­i­mum lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion should be of para­mount im­por­tance, as peo­ple are an in­te­gral el­e­ment of the tourism prod­uct of any des­ti­na­tion.

Achiev­ing this may length­en the process, but it will en­sure a ro­bust doc­u­ment that will tru­ly be the dri­ving force be­hind the re­ju­ve­na­tion of tourism in To­ba­go. �2 Sec­ond­ly, a statu­to­ry body charged with the de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing of tourism in To­ba­go should be com­mis­sioned. This board of di­rec­tors of this body should in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tives from pri­ma­ry stake­hold­ers such as the Di­vi­sions of Tourism, Agri­cul­ture and Ma­rine Af­fairs, Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth Af­fairs, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­ers.

All tourism as­sets should then be vest­ed un­der this board or au­thor­i­ty for preser­va­tion, de­vel­op­ment and man­age­ment. This statu­to­ry body should be free of the bu­reau­crat­ic shack­les of the Pub­lic Ser­vice so that it is able to quick­ly re­act and proac­tive­ly re­spond to op­por­tu­ni­ties and threats in the tourism in­dus­try. Yet, this body should be ful­ly ac­count­able to the Sec­re­tary for Tourism and Trans­porta­tion who would act as the line Sec­re­tary.

�2 Once formed, this statu­to­ry board will be charged with task num­ber three, which would be to de­vel­op a strate­gic plan for the de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing of tourism in To­ba­go, based on the re­spon­si­ble tourism pol­i­cy. This plan should in­clude el­e­ments of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness, stake­hold­er man­age­ment and lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty build­ing. This strate­gic plan needs to be adopt­ed not on­ly by those di­rect­ly in­volved in tourism but al­so ed­u­ca­tion, en­ter­tain­ment, agri­cul­ture, fish­ing among oth­ers.

This plan should have a stip­u­lat­ed eval­u­a­tion pe­ri­od which is in ad­di­tion to the con­tin­u­ous eval­u­a­tion its var­i­ous el­e­ments will re­ceive. Most im­por­tant­ly this plan must be ad­hered to and not de­mot­ed to yet an­oth­er grand doc­u­ment on a shelf.

�2 Each of the afore­men­tioned so­lu­tions will not be able to take ef­fect if the most im­por­tant step is not tak­en. Our lead­ers and de­ci­sion mak­ers need to muster the po­lit­i­cal will to dri­ve the tourism in a di­rec­tion that will en­able the in­dus­try to achieve true eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty which would lead to sus­tain­able liveli­hoods for the lo­cal pop­u­lace.

Our politi­cians, pol­i­cy mak­ers and de­ci­sion mak­ers must be will­ing to set aside their egos, po­lit­i­cal gim­micks and per­son­al de­sires in or­der to tru­ly achieve suc­cess in the world's largest in­dus­try, tourism.

Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes