Caribbean coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T must not on­ly in­vest in agri­cul­ture, but this must be linked to tourism which will cre­ate a more holis­tic sec­tor, ad­vis­es Grena­da’s Tourism Min­is­ter Adri­an Thomas.

Thomas shared such de­tails as well as in­sights in­to how link­ages can be strength­ened be­tween T&T and his home coun­try dur­ing a one-to-one in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at a trav­el ex­po re­cent­ly host­ed by the Grena­da Tourism Au­thor­i­ty.

The event which took place at the Brix Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain brought to­geth­er var­i­ous in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

Grena­da al­so re­cent­ly host­ed the Caribbean Con­fer­ence on Sus­tain­able Tourism De­vel­op­ment with one of the hall­marks be­ing agri­cul­ture. Thomas him­self is well-versed in this field, hav­ing served as min­is­ter in that ca­pac­i­ty be­fore tak­ing up his present port­fo­lio.

He holds a diplo­ma in agri­cul­ture from the East­ern Caribbean In­sti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry (ECI­AF) in Trinidad, among oth­er qual­i­fi­ca­tions. A firm be­liev­er that agri­cul­ture will make a coun­try more self-suf­fi­cient, Thomas urged this must be en­twined with tourism but in do­ing so, lo­cal peo­ple must ben­e­fit first.

“From the time my prime min­is­ter said he was trans­fer­ring me to tourism, I said it has to be agri-tourism and com­mu­ni­ty tourism. I do not be­lieve in the con­cept of pro­vid­ing for tourists in your coun­try. I be­lieve you pro­vide for your peo­ple, let them en­joy the beau­ty of the land so when vis­i­tors come they will al­so en­joy it.

“You do not want to cre­ate a sce­nario where you have to close it down...Oc­to­ber to April...be­cause the cruise ships and reg­u­lar flights do not come to Grena­da as of­ten as they would, but you want your fa­cil­i­ties to be prop­er­ly utilised so you have to de­sign your sites and prod­ucts in a way that or­di­nary peo­ple and Caribbean peo­ple can en­joy it and once you do that you can­not go wrong,” Thomas ex­plained.

This ap­proach must al­so in­clude the vast ar­ray of trop­i­cal fruits and veg­eta­bles and oth­er boun­ty the land of the Caribbean is­lands pro­duce and which can eas­i­ly draw tourists, time and time again.

“You do not want to bring peo­ple from North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope to feed them the same food they have. We have a lot of trop­i­cal prod­ucts and vis­i­tors look for­ward to those things.

“We have to or­gan­ise our agri­cul­ture in such a way that we can utilise our own home-grown food that would ben­e­fit the tourist in­dus­try,” Thomas em­pha­sised.

Con­se­quent­ly, this not on­ly saves on a coun­try’s al­ready bur­geon­ing food im­port bill, but it brings the re­gion one step clos­er to achiev­ing its crit­i­cal goal of re­duc­ing ex­pen­di­ture of food im­ports by 25 per cent by 2025. While Grena­da con­tin­ues to in­vest heav­i­ly in agri­cul­ture, get­ting prod­ucts out how­ev­er, can be a chal­lenge with lim­it­ed air­lift.

In this vein, Thomas urged this be tack­led as trade is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in keep­ing a coun­try’s econ­o­my pump­ing.

In the case of Grena­da es­pe­cial­ly he said, “We have a lot of prod­ucts we want to get out and air­lift is a se­ri­ous chal­lenge. We pro­duce a lot of sour­sop. Grena­da is the on­ly is­land in the Caribbean which ex­ports fresh sour­sop to the US. We ex­port gold­en ap­ples and man­goes but if you don’t have reg­u­lar air­lift that in­dus­try can sti­fle. If we are fo­cus­ing on tourism and we want to build that in­dus­try, it is nec­es­sary, we have the nec­es­sary trans­porta­tion sys­tems.”

Ad­dress­ing air­lift

Apart from the ca­pac­i­ty to get car­go to re­spec­tive des­ti­na­tions, en­sur­ing suf­fi­cient flights for vis­i­tor ar­rivals is al­so para­mount.

Grena­da has al­ready tak­en the lead on this, hav­ing held dis­cus­sions with Caribbean Air­lines last week to ex­am­ine this pos­si­bil­i­ty. CEO of the Grena­da Tourism Au­thor­i­ty, Pe­tra Roach, not­ed that cur­rent­ly, CAL flies to Grena­da ten times per week.

She would like this fig­ure to be dou­bled as the Spice Isle re­mains a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion of choice for many Trinida­di­ans.

“We got ten flights a week and we got loads that are in the 90s and high 90s.

“There is the band­width to grow and I think hav­ing a dou­ble dai­ly ser­vice would be the op­ti­mum. That’s the dis­cus­sion we have had,” Roach said. Fur­ther, she said since its open­ing a few years ago Roy­al­ton, Grena­da re­mains a beloved spot with many re­peat vis­i­tors from this coun­try.

“Peo­ple are al­so com­ing with mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional fam­i­lies and are not on­ly stay­ing week­ends but are al­so stay­ing sev­en to 10 days from Trinidad. We are al­so see­ing a lot of com­pa­nies from Trinidad do their in­cen­tives to Grena­da, a lot of them do con­fer­ences.

“We recog­nise there’s not on­ly the sun, sand and sea ex­pe­ri­ence Trinida­di­ans are look­ing for, but there’s the ge­neal­o­gy as most peo­ple have got a rel­a­tive or friend. So we are al­so look­ing to cu­rate more events that will speak to that au­di­ence,” Roach said.

She added there is al­so the “ju­di­cious mix” of leisure traf­fic and those who do busi­ness with Grena­da.

“We have to make sure we have a per­fect mix where peo­ple leave Trinidad ear­ly in the morn­ing... and if we got an ear­ly morn­ing de­par­ture and an ear­ly af­ter­noon de­par­ture that would be a per­fect mix,” Roach said. Re­gard­ing the time-frame when ad­di­tion­al flights can be im­ple­ment­ed, she said this was still in the works.

Not­ing that CAL is a busi­ness, Roach ac­knowl­edged that the State-owned car­ri­er needs to look at how it can op­ti­mise its fleet.

“I think in any sen­si­ble de­ci­sion-mak­ing you have a six month pe­ri­od so that would al­so be quite rea­son­able,” Roach added.

How­ev­er, with Grena­da’s Spice Mas soon ap­proach­ing—tak­ing place in the sec­ond week of Au­gust—and to en­sure in­creased pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty, CAL has put mea­sures in place. Dionne Ligoure, CAL’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions said the air­craft type has moved from ATRs which are the small­er tur­bo en­gine to Jet air­craft which car­ries 160 seats.

Be­yond sand, sun and sea

The av­er­age vis­i­tor wants a more im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and, recog­nis­ing that, Grena­da con­tin­ues to move away from the sand, sea and sun con­cept.

In terms of fig­ures, Roach shared that from Jan­u­ary to March 2024, Grena­da wel­comed al­most 4,000 Trinida­di­ans com­pared to 2,687 for the same pe­ri­od in 2023. This rep­re­sents a 25 per cent in­crease.

She added this coun­try is the num­ber one source mar­ket in the Caribbean, Grena­da al­so con­tin­ues to see tourist ar­rival in­creas­es in oth­er mar­kets such as the UK and Roach at­trib­uted this to con­sis­tent­ly strong ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing ro­bust mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

“We have tak­en a lot of time to delve in­to what ex­pe­ri­ences peo­ple en­joy most and we have tak­en the pledge we are go­ing to be true to our­selves and what we rep­re­sent. It’s all about peo­ple who are com­ing to look for re­cal­i­bra­tion. It’s al­so peo­ple who are in­de­pen­dent thinkers, who are well trav­elled, who want to try the culi­nary, who want to do soft ad­ven­ture,” Roach ex­plained.

She added a lot of mon­ey was spent on the is­land’s var­i­ous prod­ucts, cit­ing Grena­da’s un­der­wa­ter sculp­ture park which was the first of its kind in the world. This was ex­pand­ed in No­vem­ber last year and now has 100 fea­tures.

“That is part of our thrust to en­sure we are a sus­tain­able des­ti­na­tion,” Roach said, not­ing the idea of the park re­sult­ed from the de­struc­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Ivan which struck Grena­da with full force on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2004. Years af­ter, the is­land not on­ly per­se­vered but al­so re­lent­less­ly re­built its tourism sec­tor.

“We re­al­ly want­ed to en­sure we took care and pre­served that frag­ile ma­rine ecosys­tem that is so crit­i­cal to the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of our na­tion,” Roach added.

The is­land is al­so set to launch an un­der­wa­ter wed­ding chapel as well as a Grena­da un­der­wa­ter sign and a sec­ond un­der­wa­ter sculp­ture park which is ear­marked for Grena­da’s sis­ter isle of Car­ri­a­cou. Roach un­der­scored that Grena­da’s tourism prod­uct em­braces so­cial­ly and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ment, epit­o­mised by mar­ket po­si­tion­ing un­der the ‘Pure Grena­da’ brand.

The brand Pure Grena­da, the Spice of the Caribbean, launched on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2014, en­cap­su­lates the tri-is­land na­tion’s unique sell­ing points while main­tain­ing its strong spice cul­ture.