One of the things I have al­ways be­lieved in is the con­cept of beat re­port­ing. For the non jour­nal­ists it is about cov­er­ing one spe­cif­ic area so that you spe­cialise in that part of jour­nal­ism, de­vel­op your con­tacts and are able to tell the sto­ry, the re­al sto­ry, to your au­di­ence in a way and with con­fi­dence that a gen­er­al re­porter won’t be able to.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is a lot of gen­er­al news cov­er­age by my col­leagues and it makes it far more dif­fi­cult for in­di­vid­ual re­porters to move out of the re­port­ing mode of the “he said she said” and re­al­ly drill down on the is­sues.

It is why so much of what hap­pens in T&T does not get the kind of rigour and scruti­ny it de­serves.

The past year, as we moved from be­ing mor­ti­fied of dy­ing from the coro­n­avirus, to ac­cept­ing that we had to al­ter our lives and in­ter­ac­tions to sur­vive, we recog­nised that many of us are about to lose or have lost so much of our sus­te­nance. We even ac­cept­ed that Car­ni­val, which would nor­mal­ly give the econ­o­my such a fil­lip, and our­selves an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­hale, that too had to be shelved. Then came the hope of the vac­cines and now the re­al­i­sa­tion that our gov­ern­ment has dropped the ball and we are like­ly to get vac­ci­nat­ed when it’s not longer a pri­or­i­ty for oth­ers.

All of this—the re­port­ing, the pick­ing sense from non­sense, the keep­ing-them-hon­est—has been left to jour­nal­ists who have ei­ther nev­er be­fore cov­ered the health sec­tor nor have the ex­pe­ri­ence to hold peo­ple to ac­count.

It is why I am not con­fi­dent we will ever get re­al an­swers to the way the coun­try han­dled the cri­sis, oth­er than the po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, self con­grat­u­la­to­ry, self idol­i­sa­tion of the gov­ern­ment and its sup­port­ers, and the rhetoric from the Op­po­si­tion that, re­gard­less of what the gov­ern­ment does, it is not go­ing to be good enough.

It is why I de­cid­ed that in this col­umn I will not spend more space talk­ing about how this bungling by Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh et al will ul­ti­mate­ly lead to longer pe­ri­ods in this eco­nom­ic co­matose state we ex­ist in. I am not go­ing to write about the gov­ern­ment’s lim­it­ing of our abil­i­ty to a restau­rant or bar, where the busi­ness­es that are be­ing brought to ru­in are be­ing told it’s the price you have to pay for liv­ing in a pan­dem­ic, where the econ­o­my is tak­ing on more debt that gen­er­a­tions will have to re­pay, where the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert can boast he will con­tin­ue to bor­row and ac­cess the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to pay salaries. No, I will not write on that!

I de­cid­ed that it must be dif­fi­cult for the coun­try to con­stant­ly read and make sense of what ap­pears to be our zom­bie-like walk from cri­sis to cri­sis, our econ­o­my on stand­still and no clear ex­pla­na­tion why restau­rants can­not serve al­co­hol legal­ly, be­cause many are qui­et­ly serv­ing it, which busi­ness­es must be lim­it­ed to 10 pm and why with the re­cent case num­bers the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to choose win­ners and losers in the econ­o­my.

Talk­ing about these is­sues will per­haps on­ly let some­one at­tack you for be­ing an­ti gov­ern­ment, or an­ti­quat­ed by those who, if you lis­ten to them close­ly, you know they are like what Shake­speare de­scribes as a poor play­er that struts and frets his hour up­on the stage and then is heard no more.

So when I con­sid­ered the above I de­cid­ed I should write on the good work that the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL) is en­gaged in to seek to pre­pare the is­land post COVID-19.

Ac­cord­ing to its CEO Louis Lewis, the TTAL recog­nised from ear­ly that be­cause the bor­ders were be­ing closed as a re­sult of a pan­dem­ic as­so­ci­at­ed with a health is­sue, health and well­ness will be cru­cial go­ing for­ward.

In oth­er words, it would be nec­es­sary to of­fer ac­com­mo­da­tion to vis­i­tors where they will feel it is safe and of the high­est stan­dard in terms of clean­li­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis the is­land then went af­ter, and got, the World Tourism and Trav­el Safe Trav­el stamp.

There was al­so a de­ci­sion to brand the is­land in keep­ing with the in­creas­ing de­mand for eco-tourism.

He said; “Our brand­ing speaks to the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment and what is our core at­trac­tors. So we have struck an al­liance with medi­um and what we con­sid­er as re­silient trav­eller groups that rep­re­sent what the is­land of­fers so you will see our brand­ing that has a very strong eco-at­trac­tive­ness to it or should I say sus­tain­able. That heavy green and a nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment and that is no ac­ci­dent,” he said adding that in the wake of the pan­dem­ic, with tourism ex­pect­ed to be even more com­pet­i­tive than ever, To­ba­go had to do more to stand out.

“We pair the brand­ing with that which the at­trib­ut­es of what the coun­try has done. Of course in an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple are look­ing for healthy op­tions, off the beat­en track, non-mass mar­ket and look­ing for en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly recog­nised brands, we fit right in­to that stream,” he said.

Lewis talked about stay­ing in touch with the air­lines that fly to To­ba­go and he was hap­py to re­port that they have all promised to re­turn To­ba­go to their sched­ule once the bor­ders are re­opened.

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTAL said there was work on im­prov­ing the tourism plant on the is­land.

There is no guar­an­tee that Lewis and his team’s plans will work, but at least he can ar­tic­u­late some­thing that sounds thought out and pos­si­ble.

It is that kind of clar­i­ty we need in tourism and un­der­stand­ing the for­ward and back­ward link­ages be­tween tourism, agri­cul­ture, ser­vices, forex and the wider econ­o­my.

But, as I write, en­thused by what Mr Lewis had to say, I could not help my­self in ask­ing what if the oth­er des­ti­na­tions are vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore us, as it ap­pears they will be, and the source mar­kets are al­so, as they will be, then that pent up de­mand was un­like­ly to come to a mar­ket where the virus re­mained a re­al risk to the wider pop­u­la­tion and where it may be nec­es­sary to op­er­ate with great lim­its?

I said to my­self that sure­ly the man who says he is the great­est sales­man of To­ba­go and Trinidad will not al­low such an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fall away from the sis­ter isle.

Then I re­alised it may be eas­i­er to get herd im­mu­ni­ty in To­ba­go. All you have to do is vac­ci­nate 60,000 peo­ple. But then here we go again.

Cur­tis Williams was last seen read­ing the lat­est news of vac­cine ar­rivals in Caribbean coun­tries.