Even as the world cel­e­brates World Tourism Day from Sep­tem­ber 26 to Sep­tem­ber 29, des­ti­na­tions across the world are still reel­ing from the fall­out caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Dur­ing the launch of the Tourism COVID-19 pol­i­cy brief UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res, de­scribed the fall­out ex­pe­ri­enced by de­vel­op­ing coun­tries due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as a “glob­al emer­gency.”

“Par­tic­u­lar­ly for many small is­land de­vel­op­ing states and many African coun­tries. For women rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­dige­nous peo­ples and many oth­er mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions tourism has been a ve­hi­cle for in­te­gra­tion em­pow­er­ment and gen­er­at­ing in­come.”

He said while it is im­per­a­tive that we re­build the tourism sec­tor, it must be done in a way that is safe eq­ui­table and cli­mate-friend­ly. Ac­cord­ing to Guter­res, the first re­sponse must be to at­tend to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pacts of the cri­sis.

Lo­cal­ly Tourism of­fi­cials say with prop­er sup­port and plan­ning To­ba­go’s Tourism sec­tor will not on­ly re­bound but al­so thrive. Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Chris James says he agrees with the state­ment, as his mem­bers have not earned any mon­ey since March.

“Since the lock­down every­thing has been closed but we have still had to pay up­keep costs like util­i­ties and se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance costs but we have not been earn­ing any­thing.”

James said due to the pan­dem­ic more than six thou­sand per­sons are now un­em­ployed and the sec­tor needs more sup­port to pre­vent fur­ther loss­es. And while the gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed TT 50 mil­lion dol­lars to as­sist with up­grades prop­er­ty own­ers need sup­port in the short term.

“What we re­al­ly need in the first in­stance is the con­tin­u­a­tion of the mora­to­ri­um in the banks, the mora­to­ri­um needs to be ex­tend­ed be­cause there is no mon­ey to pay and go­ing for­ward we need con­sol­i­da­tion of loans.”

He sug­gest­ed that the gov­ern­ment con­sid­er rein­tro­duc­ing the Gov­ern­ment Guar­an­tee Loan pro­gramme for per­sons in the sec­tor and a long-term plan must al­so be de­vel­oped, as this will re­build con­fi­dence in the des­ti­na­tion.

“We need to build a five year plan that boasts about all these nice things we just spoke about the new air­port the new fer­ries but al­so gives us at­tain­able time­lines that we know we can reach to get us back up to the fig­ures we had in the two thou­sands and re­build the do­mes­tic line.”

He said To­ba­go needs tourism, as the sec­tor doesn’t on­ly pro­vide for the six per­sons di­rect­ly in­volved, as farm­ers, fish­er­men and many oth­er down­stream providers al­so ben­e­fit from the sec­tor. As it re­lates to build­ing a sus­tain­able tourism sec­tor James said To­ba­go is strate­gi­cal­ly poised to ben­e­fit when the sec­tor re­bounds.

“Our mar­ket­ing is al­ready fo­cussed on the green ini­tia­tives our mar­ket­ing is talk­ing about her­itage and all of that and we are al­so in a po­si­tion where we are not a mass tourism des­ti­na­tion. The num­ber one con­cern for trav­ellers now is se­cu­ri­ty and they feel less safe in a des­ti­na­tion that of­fers the all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence they are go­ing to feel much safer in a des­ti­na­tion like To­ba­go.”

He said all in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers must be con­sult­ed for the plan to be ef­fec­tive­ly de­vel­oped and ex­e­cut­ed. James said the as­so­ci­a­tion is in talks with the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Ran­dall Mitchell, to look at ways to re­build the sec­tor. Calls to the Min­is­ter’s mo­bile phone for com­ment were unan­swered.