The vig­or­ous cam­paign­ing in To­ba­go lead­ing up to the THA elec­tions may be fo­cused on com­pet­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and claims of per­for­mance, but the 800-pound go­ril­la in the room, the con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to stim­u­late tourism in the is­land de­mands its place in these pub­lic dis­cus­sions.

No politi­cian in To­ba­go can claim any de­ci­sive suc­cess in the ef­forts to stim­u­late tourism on the is­land, and the steady col­lapse in vis­i­tors and rev­enue will af­fect every­one. That sit­u­a­tion has now be­come so dire that Vir­gin At­lantic Air­lines has an­nounced that it will pull its ser­vice to To­ba­go from March next year, ap­par­ent­ly be­cause it is dis­sat­is­fied with To­ba­go's ef­forts to mar­ket it­self to the larg­er world.

This is a cru­cial de­ci­sion, and it points to the shat­tered state of To­ba­go tourism more clear­ly than any­thing that's been said by the is­land's hote­liers. Vir­gin prides it­self on be­ing a mav­er­ick air­line, will­ing to take risks that its more se­date ri­vals won't and ar­rived in the To­ba­go mar­ket with a splash, its flam­boy­ant CEO strid­ing through the To­ba­go surf with a pret­ty girl in his arms.

Now the com­pa­ny has con­ced­ed that gam­bling on im­prove­ments in our mar­ket­ing is a risk that's too rich for its tastes.

The math that gov­erns a suc­cess­ful tourism pro­gramme is a sim­ple one, but it's an equa­tion that must be con­sis­tent­ly and vig­or­ous­ly ap­plied to en­sure suc­cess in a mar­ket that's pop­u­lat­ed with ex­ceed­ing­ly fick­le cus­tomers.

Be­gin with the de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance of dis­tinc­tive and ap­peal­ing at­trac­tions, add mar­ket­ing that ex­plains se­duc­tive­ly to po­ten­tial vis­i­tors the al­lure of To­ba­go as a des­ti­na­tion, mul­ti­ply that by ready ac­cess to the coun­try on af­ford­able air­lines that fly reg­u­lar­ly to the re­gion and add a dash of mem­o­rable ser­vice and ex­pe­ri­ences with every vis­it.

It's no longer enough to have a Caribbean des­ti­na­tion that of­fers sun in­stead of snow to a trav­eller, not with so many equal­ly ad­van­taged des­ti­na­tions mount­ing ag­gres­sive cam­paigns to woo tourists.

Vir­gin At­lantic is al­so be­com­ing more prag­mat­ic in the fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness of air trav­el. Ear­li­er this month Sin­ga­pore Air­lines sold off its 49 per cent stake in Vir­gin at a loss, tak­ing a 96 per cent good­will write down on its in­vest­ment in the air­line af­ter a US$360 mil­lion cash sale to Delta Air­lines.

Sin­ga­pore Air­lines was re­port­ed to be un­hap­py with the per­for­mance of Vir­gin's Heathrow land­ing slots, a cru­cial link point for its flights be­tween Asia and New York. Delta would prize the po­ten­tial for code shar­ing and ac­cess to the Lon­don land­ing slots, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the price they paid for a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ing.

These high-fi­nance deals may seem dis­tant from the trou­bles fac­ing To­ba­go's main source of in­come, but any is­land that's play­ing in the tourism mar­ket must pay close at­ten­tion to every vari­ant in the suc­cess­ful ex­e­cu­tion of its tourism equa­tion.

While To­ba­go can hard­ly af­ford the sums that would keep an air­line fly­ing to Crown Point at a loss, it can and should be work­ing hard­er at im­prov­ing its prod­uct. A coun­try might once have at­tract­ed vis­i­tors based on its nat­ur­al as­sets and built sup­port struc­tures and at­trac­tions over time with tourism rev­enue.

No coun­try can hope to do that in to­day's tourism mar­ket. In­done­sia, which counts the beach­es of Bali and the parks of Suma­tra among its tourism as­sets had to man­age set­backs af­ter re­li­gious vi­o­lence and ter­ror­ism claimed lives and has been vig­or­ous­ly mar­ket­ing cul­tur­al tourism.

It's no co­in­ci­dence that Vir­gin in­tends to halt its flights from March. From then, the win­ter sea­son won't be a rea­son for any­one to vis­it To­ba­go and the pull of the is­land as an at­trac­tion will be all that would in­ter­est a po­ten­tial tourist. As far as Vir­gin is con­cerned, there's noth­ing there.