To­ba­go’s tourism mar­ket is in the midst of on­go­ing re­cov­ery.

The is­land en­joyed the re­turn of cruise ships, while for the first time since 2019, held the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val.

The Jazz fes­ti­val came two weeks af­ter the typ­i­cal­ly busy East­er week­end.

But pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Al­pha Lorde said while these events once again brought wel­comed ac­tiv­i­ty to the sec­tor, the East­er week­end was not as pro­duc­tive as it had been in 2022.

Lorde not­ed that with bor­ders re­opened and flights along the air­bridge lim­it­ed, To­ba­go lost some vis­i­tors. Es­pe­cial­ly vis­i­tors they pre­vi­ous­ly wel­comed from the do­mes­tic mar­ket to in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions.

Ali­cia Ed­wards, ex­ec­u­tive chair of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd, con­firmed that the agency’s mar­ket was on­ly see­ing about half the lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty it had en­joyed be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit.

“At the end of 2022, our ar­rivals and per­for­mance da­ta in gen­er­al, we’re at about 52 per cent of pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, giv­en the fact that we would have been prob­a­bly the last in the Caribbean to ac­tu­al­ly ease re­stric­tions. Be­cause it’s one thing to open your bor­ders to in­ter­na­tion­al flights. The oth­er lim­it­ing fac­tor would be the re­stric­tions on mask-wear­ing and the anti­gen (tests)” she said.

“So we did not ful­ly ease re­stric­tions un­til Ju­ly of last year. And so the da­ta that we have is very pos­i­tive for us be­cause we think that com­ing back at about 52 per cent of pre-pan­dem­ic, giv­en the short time frame with­in which we had to work.”

Ed­wards told Sun­day Busi­ness that To­ba­go is work­ing to build on the mo­men­tum that had been gen­er­at­ed dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

She said while the agency was still tab­u­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion fol­low­ing the Jazz fes­ti­val, she not­ed the event did bring in some in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers.

“We’re very op­ti­mistic about the re­cov­ery and sep­a­rate from the da­ta as we con­tin­ue to in­ter­act with var­i­ous source mar­kets. There is a re­newed en­er­gy for trav­el and trav­el­ling to To­ba­go and so we are very heart­ened and en­er­gised to con­tin­ue do­ing the work that we do,” she said, not­ing that Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had pre­vi­ous­ly hint­ed at changes to the event, which she is op­ti­mistic could fur­ther push the Tourism prod­uct in To­ba­go.

She said there have been moves made in the last year that have helped di­ver­si­fy To­ba­go’s tourism of­fer­ings, such as the es­tab­lish­ment of the Com­fort Inn and re­fur­bish­ment of the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel.

“Com­fort Inn is re­al­ly clas­si­fied as a busi­ness ho­tel. So it caters to a spe­cif­ic niche and it fills a pre­vi­ous­ly un­met de­mand for hav­ing a ho­tel with­in the cap­i­tal of Scar­bor­ough be­cause most of all ho­tels are on the out­skirts on the beach­es. So Com­fort Inn has been fill­ing that busi­ness trav­el need and al­so some leisure trav­el but more busi­ness trav­el,” said Ed­wards.

She con­firmed that the de­spite the han­dover of Man­ta Lodge in Feb­ru­ary, the Spey­side ho­tel is still not yet in op­er­a­tion as the THA is still seek­ing an op­er­a­tor for it.

“The THA is cur­rent­ly out with a ten­der to get an op­er­a­tor for the fa­cil­i­ty but when that fa­cil­i­ty comes back on board, it is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be niche, pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed or oc­cu­pied by divers most­ly in the north­east of To­ba­go and over­all space and peo­ple who would va­ca­tion on that part of the is­land. So the new ad­di­tions are ben­e­fi­cial for spe­cif­ic nich­es and the gen­er­al room stock of the is­land,” she said.

She how­ev­er could not say when a planned five-star ho­tel set to be built at Kil­gwyn Bay, which was an­nounced by the Chief Sec­re­tary last year, would be­gin.

“I know that there are still some en­vi­ron­men­tal and oth­er things hap­pen­ing there. And I don’t have a date for when they will break ground but I know that the pre­lim­i­nary things are pro­gress­ing well with no hic­cups as far as I know,” she said.

Ed­wards was heart­ened by the re-com­mit­ment of Con­dor Air­lines to the is­land, as she ex­plained the air­line served a sig­nif­i­cant for­eign mar­ket.

“Ger­many is re­al­ly our sec­ond largest source mar­ket af­ter the UK and you would ap­pre­ci­ate that it’s dif­fi­cult to sell and to im­prove your re­sults from that mar­ket if there is no air­lift,” she said. She ex­plained that the new sched­ule agreed by the Air­line for Win­ter 2023, should be ben­e­fi­cial to vis­i­tors as the shift­ing in dates from Sun­day to Tues­day now means that vis­i­tors can now have a full week­end ex­pe­ri­ence in To­ba­go.

“With pre­vi­ous arrange­ments, the week­end was cut short be­cause peo­ple had to leave on the Sun­day to head back in­to Frank­furt. So the Tues­day arrange­ment is per­fect for us be­cause it dove­tails with our re­search of Ger­man vis­i­tors who come and they spend be­tween 10 to 14 days. So we are very hap­py with the new date that the flight will be com­ing,” she said.

She was al­so pleased that Con­dor has now switched from Boe­ing to the Air­bus 330, which al­so tied in To­ba­go’s plans to mar­ket the air­line and eco-des­ti­na­tion.

“These air­craft are a lot more fu­el ef­fi­cient and car­bon-foot­print friend­ly. And so the con­sump­tion per pas­sen­ger is a lot less, giv­en To­ba­go is a des­ti­na­tion that po­si­tions it­self on sus­tain­abil­i­ty prin­ci­ples. We al­so at­tract a niche that is very much about sus­tain­abil­i­ty and eco. We’re very hap­py about what the de­sign changes and the air­craft changes mean for the en­vi­ron­ment and the cli­mate,” she said.

Ed­wards ex­plained that Con­dor’s de­ci­sion to re­sume ser­vice was al­so promis­ing as since 51 per cent of the air­line’s shares were pur­chased by At­testor in 2021, the air­line has had to be more pru­dent with its des­ti­na­tion se­lec­tion.

“Each unit has to make a busi­ness case wher­ev­er you route it flies. So it has not been just sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and the fact that we’ve been go­ing to To­ba­go for the longest while. The per­for­mance on the route and the po­ten­tial of the route was crit­i­cal for Con­dor even de­cid­ing to re­turn for this win­ter. While we have work to do, there is al­ways work to do we’re very heart­ened by last year’s re­sults,” she ex­plained.

Ed­wards ex­plained that TTAL has con­tin­u­ous­ly been shop­ping To­ba­go to air­lines but ad­mit­ted that cur­rent­ly the agency was re­strict­ed by bud­get lim­i­ta­tions as To­ba­go has to pay for these air­lines to pro­vide ser­vices to the is­land. As such she is hope­ful the gov­ern­ment will com­mit even more fund­ing to tourism.

“A char­ter runs at about US$300,000 to US$400,000 on av­er­age; some even more de­pend­ing on the haul. And so when you look at our bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion, it makes it im­pos­si­ble for the agency to com­mit to the num­ber of flights that we need in or­der to have the im­pact that we have. So that re­al­ly is a lim­it­ing thing. So we look for flights. We en­gage with stake­hold­ers. We have cost­ings, but the bud­get and the fund­ing pre­vents us from mov­ing to the next step. So we’re hop­ing as that as there’s talk about re­newed em­pha­sis at a na­tion­al lev­el of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my away from oil and gas, that the dol­lars will flow to sup­port the talk,” she said.

Ed­wards said the tourism prod­uct had reg­u­lar­ly suf­fered from an in­con­sis­tent ef­fort, and de­spite the lim­i­ta­tions, she had been work­ing to en­sure that To­ba­go’s ap­proach to tourism is far more steady in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

“Tourism and tourism ad­min­is­tra­tion on a des­ti­na­tion is re­al­ly grow­ing a plant you start with a seed and it needs con­stant tend­ing. The in­stance you ne­glect that plant some­times you have to start over. And part of the chal­lenge that has hap­pened in terms of tourism pro­mo­tion, is that there is a stop-start, a stop-and-start arrange­ment for the des­ti­na­tion that does not au­gur well in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket. It does not build con­fi­dence and it makes it hard­er for you to pick back up and get ahead. And so what our cur­rent board in­tends to do is to have a strat­e­gy of calm con­sis­ten­cy, very qui­et­ly do­ing all the things that we need to do, con­tin­u­ing to nur­ture the re­la­tion­ships that we have,” she said.