Tourism Trinidad Ltd, (TTL) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC), host­ed a work­shop to in­tro­duce cash­less pay­ment meth­ods to lo­cal trav­el tourism mer­chants to catal­yse a shift in the way the sec­tor con­ducts busi­ness.

The work­shop, held at One Fin­Tech Av­enue, at Tow­er D, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, at­tract­ed tourism stake­hold­ers from tour guides, com­mu­ni­ty tourism or­gan­i­sa­tions, hote­liers and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to lo­cal craft or­gan­i­sa­tions. It pro­vid­ed in­sights in­to the ad­van­tages of dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tions and their po­ten­tial to en­hance vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ences and im­prove tourism busi­ness.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad Car­la Cu­pid not­ed, “With the rapid evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, the glob­al tourism land­scape is un­der­go­ing a par­a­digm shift to­wards dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, of­fer­ing un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth, ef­fi­cien­cy, and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. By em­brac­ing dig­i­tal pay­ments, our sec­tor is poised to un­lock a myr­i­ad of pos­si­bil­i­ties, rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way trans­ac­tions are con­duct­ed and ex­pe­ri­ences are de­liv­ered to vis­i­tors.”

Cu­pid out­lined that with ca­pa­bil­i­ties to of­fer has­sle-free pay­ment op­tions for tourist mer­chants and cus­tomers, dig­i­tal pay­ments can el­e­vate the tourist ex­pe­ri­ence and en­cour­age re­peat vis­its.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion with TTIFC is time­ly as we move in­to the Car­ni­val sea­son and oth­er up­com­ing cul­tur­al and tourism events and ex­pe­ri­ences that can ben­e­fit from the pow­er of dig­i­tal pay­ments,” she added.

“Mer­chants in trav­el tourism and oth­er sec­tors have not yet seen their true rev­enue po­ten­tial if they on­ly con­duct busi­ness through cash trans­ac­tions. As Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to po­si­tion it­self as ‘The place that is al­ways in sea­son’, there will al­ways be room for fin­tech in­no­va­tion and dig­i­tal pay­ment in­te­gra­tion to help boost the tourism busi­ness. While we are in pre­lim­i­nary talks with Tourism Trinidad, TTIFC is ready and able to con­nect the tourism sec­tor to the thriv­ing Fin­Tech ecosys­tem.”, said John Out­ridge, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of TTIFC.

The work­shop, led by Car­los New­ton, man­ag­er, Fin­tech Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment, TTIFC, show­cased fin­tech so­lu­tions from lo­cal e-mon­ey is­suers and de­vel­op­ers, in­clud­ing Pay­wise Ltd, Zed Labs, and Pesh Mon­ey.