Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion (DOTT) in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said her re­cent trip to Berlin, Ger­many, was a suc­cess­ful ven­ture.The Sec­re­tary was part of a T&T del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion, Min­istry of Tourism and var­i­ous stake­hold­ers at the In­ter­na­tionale Touris­musb�rse (ITB), an an­nu­al tourism and trav­el trade con­ven­tion in Ger­many.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said she high­light­ed some of the chal­lenges for To­ba­go tourism at an in­ter­na­tion­al press con­fer­ence at the tourism con­ven­tion."I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light the need for more in­vest­ment in To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly in the ho­tel niche.

One of the chal­lenges we have had is that we have not been able to at­tract in­vest­ment in five star ho­tels," she said. To­ba­go cur­rent­ly has 2500 ho­tel rooms. David­son-Ce­les­tine said the THA and DOTT have "tak­en a very con­scious ap­proach to invit­ing in­vestors, and al­so to putting out the call, that we need more, and im­proved room stock on this is­land."She al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind the Ger­man mar­ket of the dif­fer­ent prod­ucts To­ba­go of­fers, such as ro­mance and sports tourism.

The con­tin­gency was joined by TT sport am­bas­sador Dwight Yorke who is well-known in Eu­rope.David­son-Ce­les­tine said To­ba­go's of­fer­ings were well re­ceived by the Ger­man me­dia and she ex­pects "some pos­i­tives com­ing out of this ex­pe­ri­ence."The Sec­re­tary said she had dis­cus­sions with sev­er­al air­line rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing tourism ses­sions at the con­ven­tion.

"We were able to for­malise the arrange­ment with Con­dor and of course Con­dor has been fly­ing in To­ba­go for some time now. From 2010 to 2012, they have been con­tribut­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16.5 per cent to 18.6 per cent to to­tal in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals to To­ba­go.

It was im­por­tant for us to con­firm and fi­nalise the arrange­ments with Con­dor," she said.

The T&T del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ed dif­fer­ent booths and trade shows while at ITB to gain an un­der­stand­ing of new mar­ket­ing trends in the sec­tor."We want To­ba­go's tourism to be a year-round ac­tiv­i­ty and we want to be able to com­pete with what is hap­pen­ing both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," David­son-Ce­les­tine said.ITB at­tracts more than 170,000 vis­i­tors. T&T was among the ex­hibitors rep­re­sent­ing 180 coun­tries at the con­ven­tion.