Camille McEach­nie

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is tak­ing the To­ba­go For­wards (TF) to task for its re­cent com­ments on the brand sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween the To­ba­go Tourism Agency (TTA) and two of its Caribbean neigh­bours.

Speak­ing at the PNM’s Coun­cil Of­fice on Robin­son Street, Scar­bor­ough, yes­ter­day, the par­ty’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer (PRO) Kwe­si Des Vi­gnes said the TF’s com­ments were off mes­sage.

He said, “The tourism re­brand­ing is part of a big­ger process of tourism mar­ket­ing ...and we have to recog­nise that...and we are look­ing to see what are the ways we can ben­e­fit and ex­pe­ri­ence To­ba­go and that is the more im­por­tant mes­sage.”

He added: “It’s un­for­tu­nate now that we have a zom­bie par­ty all of a sud­den ris­es from the dead ...who clear­ly has no in­ter­est in tourism be­cause they want to put Vi­sine in peo­ple’s wa­ter.”

In Jan­u­ary 2017, the then-TF leader, Christlyn Moore, told To­bag­o­ni­ans to put Vi­sine in wa­ter for Trinida­di­ans to drink if they vis­it­ed the is­land to vote in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

“When they come in yuh house...I say drop Vi­sine in their wa­ter, give them di­ar­rhoea,” Moore said.

When the brand­ing brouha­ha erupt­ed on so­cial me­dia, over the week­end, af­ter in­for­ma­tion sur­faced that An­guil­la’s tourism board’s tagline is “Be­yond Ex­tra­or­di­nary,” TF crit­i­cised the TTA for its lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty.

“No orig­i­nal­i­ty no per­son­al­i­ty,” TF said of the tourism agency’s tagline which was un­veiled in No­vem­ber at the World Trav­el Mar­ket.

An­guil­la be­gan us­ing the tagline since March to get An­guil­lans in­volved in tourism on the is­land.

“ATB presents: Be­yond Ex­tra­or­di­nary: An­guil­lan Strong is one way to cap­tion the de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­durance and re­silience of the An­guil­la com­mu­ni­ty,” one An­guil­lan Tourist Board’s Face­book said.

Speak­ing fur­ther on the brand­ing is­sue, Des Vi­gnes said an is­land’s tourism tagline is not the on­ly im­por­tant area in its mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

“To­ba­go Be­yond Or­di­nary, whether there is a sim­i­lar an­oth­er des­ti­na­tion sim­i­lar to it in terms of the tagline, as far as I am con­cerned there is no place like To­ba­go and the ques­tions comes how do we sell To­ba­go to our tar­get mar­ket,” he said.

Mean­while, he has en­cour­aged To­bag­o­ni­ans to do their part in get­ting tourists to ex­pe­ri­ence To­ba­go in 101 ways.

“We want tourist when they come to have a great ex­pe­ri­ence ...there were times in the past where tourists would have had neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences...we have to guard our To­ba­go lega­cy jeal­ous­ly,” Des Vi­gnes said.