In re­sponse to some con­cerns ex­pressed by Cap­tain Boris Beck­er of the cruise ship AI­DAvi­ta about safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty af­ter he docked his ves­sel at the port of Port-of-Spain, Chair­man of the Port Au­thor­i­ty Joseph Toney of­fered as­sur­ances that im­prove­ments were be­ing planned for the port.

In Sun­day's Guardian, Mr Toney was more blunt about the state of af­fairs at the pas­sen­ger port, de­scrib­ing the re­cep­tion area for cruise ship vis­i­tors as a "bus shed." The Port Chair­man must be aware of the com­pe­ti­tion for cruise ship busi­ness in the Caribbean, ac­knowl­edg­ing that St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica were well ahead of this coun­try's ef­forts as well the low per­cent­age of re­gion­al vis­i­tors our port at­tracts.

That com­pe­ti­tion is on­ly go­ing to in­crease. In Feb­ru­ary 2011, the Nevis Is­land Ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced plans to more di­rect­ly court the cruise mar­ket. See­ing on­ly up­side for the is­land in di­ver­si­fy­ing the tourism-cen­tric econ­o­my. In Sep­tem­ber, Nevis'Pre­mier and Min­is­ter of Tourism Joseph Par­ry an­nounced plans to lead a del­e­ga­tion to the Unit­ed States to meet, one-on-one with the CEOs of the ma­jor cruise lines to make the is­land's case to be added to their ea­ger­ly court­ed itin­er­aries.

Ja­maica opened its fourth cruise ship port, the Fal­mouth Cruise Port in March 2011, bring­ing a swift res­ur­rec­tion to a mori­bund colo­nial dis­trict that re­spond­ed by im­me­di­ate­ly tap­ping in­to its lega­cy of old Geor­gian homes to cre­ate a land­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that re­called Fal­mouth's his­to­ry as a busy port for sug­ar, mo­lasses and rum.

There may be no tall ships dock­ing there to­day, but vis­i­tors are im­mersed in the feel of his­to­ry, the fresh­ly cob­bled streets cut­ting new paths of op­por­tu­ni­ty through what had be­come a sleepy sea­side vil­lage. It's in this com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment that Trinidad and To­ba­go finds it­self, count­ing less than 25,000 vis­i­tors ar­riv­ing via cruise ship and lit­tle prospects of im­prov­ing that sit­u­a­tion with­out some se­ri­ous re­think­ing of the sit­u­a­tion.

To put those num­bers in per­spec­tive, it's use­ful to know that the larg­er cruise lin­ers come to port with be­tween 2,500 and 5,000 vis­i­tors aboard. The Port-of-Spain port's per­for­mance in cruise ship ar­rivals for 2012 bor­ders on un­sus­tain­able by the stan­dards of the in­dus­try. The dilem­ma the Port-of-Spain port faces mir­rors the prob­lems of To­ba­go, where de­vel­op­ment and plan­ning must pre­cede any an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in vis­i­tor num­bers.

What's greet­ing vis­i­tors dis­em­bark­ing in Port-of-Spain now is a hodge­podge of tours of vary­ing qual­i­ty and in­ter­est, an ap­palling Car­ni­val in­flu­enced wel­come and Mr Toney's bus shed, which of­fers a clear in­di­ca­tion of the poor state of our ca­pac­i­ty to re­ceive cruise ship vis­i­tors.

There is no co­her­ent tourism prod­uct be­ing mas­ter­mind­ed at the high­est lev­els of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that's com­pet­i­tive with the sleek, well-or­gan­ised at­trac­tions that are the stan­dard for a Caribbean is­land hop­ing to win cruise ship busi­ness. Un­til we ac­knowl­edge just how far off base we are with our ex­ist­ing of­fer­ings; noth­ing about this poor per­for­mance is like­ly to change.

Tourism plan­ners should op­er­ate un­der no il­lu­sions about the im­por­tance of qual­i­ty des­ti­na­tions to cruise lines. Roy­al Caribbean in­vest­ed US$170 mil­lion in the re­de­vel­op­ment of Fal­mouth Cruise Port, en­sur­ing that one of the two berths could ac­com­mo­date its 16-deck Oa­sis of the Seas cruise lin­er.

The cruise busi­ness is high­ly com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and even cruis­es to the Caribbean dur­ing win­ter is no longer an easy win, with north­ern coun­tries pro­mot­ing cruis­es that play to at­trac­tions en­hanced by snow. It costs more to cruise the Caribbean, but the nat­ur­al at­trac­tions of the re­gion have kept cruise num­bers grow­ing. If Trinidad and To­ba­go wants to play in this high stakes game, it must bring more to the ta­ble than it has been will­ing to in­vest in cre­at­ing so far.