Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

COVID-19’s im­pact on tourism has been so dev­as­tat­ing that the sec­tor is a high­ly un­like­ly can­di­date for any ma­jor short term di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­fort—es­pe­cial­ly in light of the gov­ern­ment’s an­tic­i­pa­tion of a slug­gish re­cov­ery for the in­dus­try in T&T.

This is even as the Gov­ern­ment’s roadmap to re­cov­ery team sets to ad­vise Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the way for­ward and how the coun­try may di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions by Guardian Me­dia, Tourism Min­is­ter, Ran­dall Mitchell said: “The trav­el and tourism in­dus­try is un­doubt­ed­ly one of the hard­est hit sec­tors world­wide and will be the sec­tor most like­ly to be last to re­cov­er.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment an­tic­i­pat­ed a very slow re­cov­ery in the short to medi­um term, and this was against a back­ground of tremen­dous un­cer­tain­ty. Yet Mitchell af­firmed that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion re­mained a goal of Gov­ern­ment.

For many, it is not as ob­vi­ous how im­por­tant tourism is to the health of T&T’s econ­o­my. That is be­cause T&T is the largest ben­e­fi­cia­ry of trade in the re­gion and its man­u­fac­tur­ers dom­i­nate the re­gion­al mar­kets. There­fore, the health of the tourism-de­pen­dent is­lands im­pacts the wealth of T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers.

In a re­cent we­bi­nar, the eco­nom­ic ad­vi­sor for Caribbean at the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), David Rosen­blatt said that COVID-19 had posed one of the most com­plex eco­nom­ic sce­nar­ios in the last 100 years.

For the Caribbean, Rosen­blatt said, the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion is “pri­mar­i­ly a tale of tourism and com­modi­ties.” How­ev­er, this presents a ma­jor hur­dle to any im­me­di­ate di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plans.

Echo­ing the Tourism Min­is­ter’s sen­ti­ments, Rosen­blatt ex­plained the sec­tor was en­dur­ing a dou­ble im­pact as it faced the re­ces­sion­ary im­pact as­so­ci­at­ed with the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, which af­fect­ed tourist ar­rivals sub­stan­tial­ly in the Caribbean and now the fear of fly­ing and the fear of cruis­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the econ­o­mist, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica de­pend on tourism to con­tribute 48, 41 and 33 per cent re­spec­tive­ly to their gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP). He al­so said that COVID-19’s im­pact could sig­nif­i­cant dis­rupt these con­tri­bu­tions.

The GDPs of Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica ac­cord­ing to the world bank are US $12.42bn ($83.97bn), US$5.145bn ($34.78bn), US$15.71 bn ($106.21), re­spec­tive­ly.

The GDP for T&T is US $23.81 bn ($160.97), where the oil and gas sec­tor ac­counts for 18 per cent. How­ev­er, the re­main­ing 78 per cent of the T&T’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP can be still be af­fect­ed as T&T’s ex­port rev­enue could shrink as de­mand is cur­tailed in glob­al mar­kets.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the World Trav­el and Tourism Con­cil’s (WTTC) 2019 fact­sheet on T&T in­di­cat­ed that tourism and trav­el con­tributed 10.3 per cent of the coun­try’s GDP. COIVD-19 would dis­rupt this es­ti­mate as the WTTC has re­cent­ly re­port­ed pro­ject­ed loss­es of 100.8 mil­lion jobs and US$2.7 tril­lion to glob­al GDP.

Fur­ther­more, in its 2019 re­port on the re­gion, the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) in­di­cat­ed that to­tal vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture is ex­pect­ed to reach an es­ti­mat­ed US$40.6bn for 2019, rep­re­sent­ing a 3.3 per cent in­crease com­pared to US$39.2bn for 2018.

The CTO doc­u­ment­ed that spend­ing by cruise vis­i­tors in 2019 ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8.1 per cent (US$3.3bn) of to­tal vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture and an es­ti­mat­ed US$ 37.3bn for stay over vis­i­tors.

Al­so il­lus­trat­ed by the CTO was that tourist ar­rivals to T&T in­creased by 3.5 per cent in to 388,576 vis­i­tors in 2019 but its cruise pas­sen­ger vis­its de­creased by 27.2 per cent to 91,423. With the in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Bank in­di­cat­ing that the av­er­age vis­i­tor to T&T spent $670 dai­ly, this amounts to $322 mil­lion spent in T&T for 2019.

Nonethe­less, in Feb­ru­ary, Act­ing CEO of Trinidad Tourism Ltd (TTL), Hei­di Alert ex­plained that To­ba­go was the pri­ma­ry fac­tor in the num­bers that showed a de­crease in cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals.

In re­sponse to ques­tions by GML, Alert said that its re­sponse to restor­ing the lo­cal tourism sec­tor would oc­cur in two phas­es.

Alert said the first phase would be about “weath­er­ing the im­pact of COVID-19 as the sec­tor has tak­en a se­vere blow “ and the sec­ond will be to re­build af­ter tak­ing such a hit.

The CEO said that busi­ness tourism had al­ways been strong niche for Trinidad, and TTL looks for­ward to this niche lead­ing the sec­ond phase of re­cov­ery.

Mean­while, the Tourism Min­is­ter said the in­dus­try was prepar­ing to bol­ster its mar­ket­ing ef­forts in tar­get­ing the di­as­po­ra and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors.

He ex­plained that in the short to medi­um term, the min­istry, stake­hold­ers, Tourism Trinidad will fo­cus on do­mes­tic tourism with the spe­cif­ic fo­cus on re­cov­ery of the tourism sec­tor.

Mitchell added that the grant fa­cil­i­ty aimed at tourism ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor in To­ba­go will al­low for up­grad­ing to be done by prop­er­ty own­ers where those up­grades will im­prove the qual­i­ty of the prop­er­ties and room stock.

The Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment for T&T in­di­cat­ed that the tourism in­dus­try has ma­jor po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and for­eign ex­change, but the in­dus­try need­ed a clear pol­i­cy. The Vi­sion 2020 pro­pos­al al­so not­ed that “tourism de­vel­op­ment has not been co-or­di­nat­ed and fo­cused.”

The 2020 propo­si­tion went on the say that there was a clear need to iden­ti­fy the prod­ucts in which each of the two is­lands as dis­tinct des­ti­na­tions has an ad­van­tage, and, the tourism strate­gies to be pur­sued in each des­ti­na­tion. How­ev­er, the Vi­sion 2030 doc­u­ment pri­mar­i­ly high­light’s eco tourism.

With lit­tle de­tail about tourism to be found in the Vi­sion 2030 doc­u­ment, the ques­tion arose as to whether the failed San­dals project was the on­ly weapon in the gov­ern­ment’s ar­se­nal.

When the ques­tion was posed to Mitchell he said: “Of course not.” He said that the San­dals project was a project to get a world class brand ho­tel on the is­land to act as a pull fac­tor for vis­i­tors, in­crease air­lift and to con­se­quent­ly stim­u­late in­vest­ment on the is­land.

Mitchell not­ed that it was not the on­ly project, in­di­cat­ing that a new air­port ter­mi­nal to fa­cil­i­tate in­creased trav­ellers and a ma­ri­na are al­so planned to be de­vel­oped on the is­land.

He al­lud­ed to the Ap­ple Leisure Group and Sun­wing, which are two brands that are ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go.

Al­so weigh­ing in on To­ba­go’s thrust mov­ing for­ward was To­ba­go Tourism Agency CEO, Louis Lewis who em­pha­sised that the en­tire in­dus­try would change mov­ing for­ward, as it is cur­rent­ly in a re­set po­si­tion.

He said To­ba­go had to con­tin­ue what it is do­ing but the ap­proach and as­sur­ances that it gives to vis­i­tors in the fu­ture must be dif­fer­ent—in terms of dig­i­tal adop­tion and sani­ti­sa­tion pro­to­cols.

Lewis al­so said that a ma­jor part of the work re­volved around de­vel­op­ing the at­trac­tions that are of in­ter­est to tourists.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism In­dus­try, Christo­pher James added that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion had been talked about for 25 years in T&T, and tourism should be a ma­jor fo­cus as it can earn sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue and strength­en var­i­ous sub-sec­tors like agri­cul­ture.

He said this is es­pe­cial­ly true of To­ba­go be­cause “there is very lit­tle else we can do.”