A big part of this coun­try’s East­er tra­di­tion usu­al­ly in­cludes an in­crease in do­mes­tic ar­rivals to To­ba­go which be­comes the mec­ca of all ac­tiv­i­ties.

In ad­di­tion to the hol­i­day-mak­ers, there’s the East­er Tues­day Goat and Crab Races and one of the coun­try’s biggest gospel con­certs “In His Pres­ence.”

The glob­al tourism in­dus­try is still in re­cov­ery and ad­just­ing to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but this coun­try’s closed in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders has strate­gi­cal­ly poised To­ba­go to cap­i­talise on the do­mes­tic tourism mar­ket.

Of­fi­cials have re­port­ed an in­crease in book­ings for this year’s East­er week­end and all stake­hold­ers say they are ready.

Pres­i­dent of the Buc­coo Goat and Crab Race Com­mit­tee Natasha Roach­ford Chance said the event is back on for 2021.

“Orig­i­nal­ly we thought of pre-record­ing the event and then do­ing a pre­mier on East­er Tues­day, but now we are ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ac­tu­al­ly hav­ing the event on the day with con­trolled num­bers,” she said.

But while the In His Pres­ence gospel event will not come off this year, vis­i­tors are still head­ing to the is­land.

Chair­man of the To­ba­go and Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Chris James said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has so far record­ed a 53 per cent in­crease in book­ings for the East­er pe­ri­od.

“Sim­i­lar to what we saw for Christ­mas we have more per­sons com­ing to the is­land, and again we see per­sons choos­ing vil­las and guest hous­es as their choice of ac­com­mo­da­tion be­cause at these lo­ca­tions they can cre­ate safe­ty bub­bles for them­selves and their fam­i­lies.”

He al­so said that the choice of vil­las and self-cater­ing guest hous­es could al­so be be­cause of the con­tin­ued re­stric­tions on restau­rants, as “per­sons may al­so find it more con­ve­nient cook for them­selves and con­sume al­co­hol with­out the re­stric­tions.”

James said he be­lieves the tourism sec­tor is ready to ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the COVID-19 risk.

“Al­most all of our stake­hold­ers—ho­tels, guest­hous­es, vil­la own­ers and their em­ploy­ees are con­tin­u­ous par­tic­i­pants in on­line COVID-19 safe­ty train­ing pro­grammes that are be­ing of­fered by CARPHA and we have more per­sons en­rolling in the Safe Trav­el Stamp pro­gramme,” James said.

The Safe Trav­el Stamp pro­gramme was de­signed by the World Tourism Trav­el Coun­cil (WTTC). It’s a glob­al­ly recog­nised guide­line for tourism stake­hold­ers which in­di­cates that health and hy­giene glob­al pro­to­cols are be­ing ob­served.

In De­cem­ber 2020 Tourism To­ba­go Agency Lim­it­ed CEO Louis Lewis said a to­tal of 51 tourism stake­hold­ers were sig­na­to­ries of the pro­gramme. Just this month the agency an­nounced that “the des­ti­na­tion now has more than 100 tourism busi­ness­es signed up for the WTTC “Safe Trav­els” stamp!

Mean­while, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter-is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny Vil­ma Lewis- Cock­burn as­sured that the sea-bridge is pre­pared for the in­flux of pas­sen­gers.

“We have very ro­bust guide­lines in place at both the ports of Trinidad and To­ba­go, these sys­tems are apt­ly able to treat with an in­crease in per­sons so we are ready.”

She said sys­tems are con­tin­u­ous­ly eval­u­at­ed for ef­fec­tive­ness to en­sure that trav­ellers re­main safe.

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go Zo­la Joseph said the Au­thor­i­ty’s strict COVID-19 health and safe­ty pro­to­cols re­main in place at both the Pi­ar­co and ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ports, as guid­ed by the Min­istry of Health.

“The Au­thor­i­ty con­ducts con­tin­u­ous risk as­sess­ments and eval­u­a­tions of our traf­fic flows, process­es and op­er­a­tions and re­sponds proac­tive­ly by im­ple­ment­ing the re­quired ad­just­ments to mit­i­gate the risks of the spread of COVID-19 at our air­ports.”

And Sec­re­tary for Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said the di­vi­sion is mon­i­tor­ing all de­vel­op­ments.

“The Di­vi­sion will con­tin­ue to work with its nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers to en­sure they have every­thing in place to ac­com­mo­date the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in vis­i­tors on the is­land and en­sure the Pub­lic Health pro­to­cols are be­ing ad­hered.”