The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) says it is stead­fast­ly prepar­ing the is­land for in­creased tourism ac­tiv­i­ty and the even­tu­al open­ing of T&T’s bor­ders, through prod­uct de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives fo­cused on col­lab­o­ra­tion, health, and safe­ty.

The agency said while the on­set of COVID-19 would have ground trav­el to a halt to the is­land in mid-March, the is­land’s tourism au­thor­i­ties grasped the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pri­ori­tise the de­vel­op­men­tal needs of the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try that was hit hard by the pan­dem­ic.

In ad­di­tion to the on­go­ing dis­sem­i­na­tion of a Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Re­lief Grant to­talling TT$50 mil­lion, the TTAL con­duct­ed an on­line con­sul­ta­tion se­ries with the is­land’s tourism stake­hold­ers from mid-June to Ju­ly 09, 2020 to de­vel­op a COVID-19 Tourism Health and Safe­ty Man­u­al.

The agency said the man­u­al will pro­vide To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try with the most ad­e­quate mea­sures that can be im­ple­ment­ed to re­in­force des­ti­na­tion safe­ty and un­der­line the trust of tourists, work­ers and res­i­dents.

Di­rec­tor of Prod­uct De­vel­op­ment and Des­ti­na­tion Man­age­ment of TTAL Naren­dra Ramgu­lam has been quot­ed in a state­ment as say­ing: “The pur­pose of our health and safe­ty man­u­al is re­al­ly to work to­geth­er with our in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to de­vel­op ac­tion­able and har­monised process­es and pro­ce­dures that are in line with glob­al and lo­cal pub­lic health in­struc­tions.

The agency said stake­hold­ers have shown their com­mit­ment to help TTAL po­si­tion To­ba­go as a safe des­ti­na­tion mov­ing for­ward, by shar­ing their feed­back and ideas for im­prove­ment and mak­ing the nec­es­sary rec­om­mend­ed changes.

Ho­tels, restau­rants, and oth­er busi­ness­es with­in the in­dus­try have al­ready re­spond­ed to the pan­dem­ic with stepped-up clean­ing and san­i­ta­tion, staff train­ing, and in­no­v­a­tive changes to their busi­ness mod­els and in­fra­struc­ture to al­low for so­cial dis­tanc­ing and cus­tomer safe­ty.