As T&T to­day wel­comes back KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­line to the coun­try, tax­pay­ers will spend just un­der $360,000 to mar­ket the flight and des­ti­na­tion ac­cord­ing to an agree­ment be­tween the air­line and Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL).

Guardian Me­dia has a copy of the agree­ment be­tween TTL and KLM in which both par­ties agree to split the mar­ket­ing of the flight in two and will each spend US$53,000 to mar­ket the flight. That works up to a to­tal of US $106,000 or the equiv­a­lent of TT$720,000, half of which TTL will pay for.

Af­ter an ab­sence of two decades, KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines will re­sume flights be­tween Am­s­ter­dam and this coun­try to­day.

Nether­lands Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Raphael Var­ga on so­cial me­dia said,” #KLM will start 16/10 op­er­at­ing three week­ly flights from AMS to Bridgetown (Bar­ba­dos) and Port-of-Spain (Trinidad & To­ba­go), two beau­ti­ful des­ti­na­tions in the Caribbean. The first time in 20 years that KLM will fly to Bar­ba­dos and T&T.”

The Dutch Am­bas­sador con­firmed there would be flights on Mon­day, Thurs­day and Sat­ur­day.

The an­nounce­ment came af­ter a re­cent meet­ing be­tween Am­bas­sador Var­ga and Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell ear­li­er this week con­cern­ing the flight.

When con­tact­ed about the de­vel­op­ment, Mitchell said he was ab­solute­ly thrilled by KLM’s re­turn as it opened up nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for the coun­try.

“This route opens up a num­ber of op­por­tu­ni­ties for us to at­tract vis­i­tors from across Eu­rope as well as oth­er mar­kets to ex­pe­ri­ence our vi­brant cul­ture, fes­ti­vals, and the sun, sea and sand that both Trinidad and To­ba­go of­fers,” he said,” We are all ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed.”

Mitchell al­so point­ed to the Rot­ter­dam Car­ni­val, which he felt could open the door for lo­cal cre­ative sec­tor through the par­tic­i­pa­tion and greater ex­po­sure of el­e­ments of our unique Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence to the Nether­lands.

He said the re­turn of KLM con­firmed T&T was still an at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion for vis­i­tors from both tra­di­tion­al mar­kets as well as new and emerg­ing mar­kets.