GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

T&T’s ser­vices sec­tor re­mains re­silient with feed­back from var­i­ous mem­bers stat­ing there has been lit­tle or no im­pact on their op­er­a­tions from the State of Emer­gency (SoE) which was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30.

How­ev­er, thus far, tour op­er­a­tors seem to be the hard­est hit while oth­er sec­tors such as bed and break­fast es­tab­lish­ments and ship­ping con­tin­ue to thrive.

Lor­raine Pouchet, Pres­i­dent of the T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that since the SoE, her mem­bers have seen can­cel­la­tions amount­ing to about 25 to 35 per cent.

She ex­plained that the work of an op­er­a­tor is much more than tak­ing some­one on a tour, but al­so en­tails han­dling all book­ings, meet­ing and greet­ing at the air­port, ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion, tours and trans­fers and oth­er tasks, which can al­so in­clude sourc­ing Car­ni­val cos­tumes.

“If a group is com­ing in and they’re mov­ing to­geth­er, they nor­mal­ly tend to move with an op­er­a­tor... I would say there has been be­tween 25 to 35 per cent can­cel­la­tion al­ready and an­oth­er maybe 10 or 15 per cent that are very con­cerned be­cause their book­ings are for lat­er on in the year like for May, June, Ju­ly, Au­gust,” she ex­plained.

She said op­er­a­tors are al­so re­quest­ing her to pre­pare a state­ment to send out to their clients as the re­cent trav­el ad­vi­sories is­sued by the US and UK have added to con­cerns.

“Be­cause the clients are ask­ing them what ex­act­ly is the sta­tus? What ex­act­ly is the sit­u­a­tion and should they con­tin­ue to work?

“They are now ask­ing us to re­as­sure them, which we can’t be­cause we re­al­ly don’t know even our­selves as we re­al­ly don’t know what’s go­ing on,” Pouchet added.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, main­tained there is no ev­i­dence that there has been any neg­a­tive fall­out thus far in the coun­try’s tourism sec­tor.

In fact, Mitchell stressed there has been no drop in vis­i­tor ar­rivals to this coun­try.

“While we ac­cept that the words ‘State of Emer­gency’ may cre­ate some alarm in the minds of our in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, we are do­ing what we can to com­mu­ni­cate to our bonafide tourism op­er­a­tors such as the air­lines and the cruise lines that the State of Emer­gency is a tar­get­ed ef­fort by our se­cu­ri­ty forces to elim­i­nate the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and that our vis­i­tors should ex­pect greater safe­ty and a feel­ing of greater safe­ty.

“...Now is not the time for alarmist and reck­less state­ments from the head of that as­so­ci­a­tion, even though she is pur­su­ing her po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives. A high­er lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is re­quired,” he said.

The min­is­ter al­so as­sured that his min­istry will con­tin­ue to com­mu­ni­cate as T&T ap­proach­es the “very im­por­tant Car­ni­val sea­son” to en­sure that vis­i­tors should con­tin­ue to ex­pect a high lev­el of safe­ty for the fes­ti­val.

Mitchell added he was in To­ba­go over the week­end and dur­ing that time vis­i­tors dis­em­barked and par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous tours which they thor­ough­ly en­joyed.

Oth­er play­ers do­ing well

The T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion is one of the many of ser­vices which fall un­der the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices (TTC­SI).

The cruise in­dus­try al­so con­tin­ues to hold a steady and favourable course.

Charles Car­val­ho, CEO of the cruise agency Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies, said, “I have had no can­cel­la­tion with any cruise ship what­so­ev­er. As a mat­ter of fact, my on­line busi­ness is do­ing very good...This is a State of Emer­gency with a long-term goal which will ben­e­fit the peo­ple of the coun­try. Our move­ment has not been sti­fled. When you hear there is an SoE red flags do go up, but it’s how you han­dle your busi­ness.”

He fur­ther added that busi­ness has been so good that the World­wide Mar­riage En­counter Con­ven­tion 2025 (WWME) will be held in Trinidad in June and is ex­pect­ed to be­ing in about 1400 peo­ple.

The WWME move­ment aims to pro­claim the val­ue of mar­riage and Holy Or­ders in the Church.

Oth­er mem­bers with­in the ser­vices sec­tor have al­so not­ed no cur­rent dis­rup­tion in busi­ness.

Son­ja Voisin, pres­i­dent of the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, not­ed that to date, the body has not re­ceived any re­ports or con­cerns from its mem­bers or part­ners re­gard­ing dis­rup­tions to their op­er­a­tions. She said the as­so­ci­a­tion re­mains in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all stake­hold­ers to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments and en­sure that trade and com­merce pro­ceed with­out in­ter­rup­tion.

“We want to as­sure the pub­lic and our stake­hold­ers that at this time, we do not an­tic­i­pate any di­rect neg­a­tive im­pact on the ship­ping and lo­gis­tics sec­tor. The ab­sence of cur­few re­stric­tions un­der the cur­rent SoE frame­work en­sures that op­er­a­tions with­in the mar­itime in­dus­try, in­clud­ing those of ship­ping agents, freight for­warders and re­lat­ed ser­vices, can con­tin­ue seam­less­ly.

“The Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to main­tain safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing this pe­ri­od while ad­vo­cat­ing for the con­tin­ued smooth flow of goods and ser­vices crit­i­cal to the na­tion’s econ­o­my.”

Some of the ser­vices providers in To­ba­go al­so shared their per­spec­tives on the SoE.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) Al­pha Lorde said said there has not been a sig­nif­i­cant can­cel­la­tion of reser­va­tions “that’s on the books.”

On whether there has been slow­down in Trinida­di­ans go­ing to To­ba­go due to the SoE he said this time of the year is gen­er­al­ly a slow­er pe­ri­od for Trinida­di­ans to come across to To­ba­go to sev­er­al rea­sons.

“New year, back to school, pri­or­i­ties are a lit­tle more aligned to what their nor­mal du­ties are and that just gen­er­al­ly hap­pens at the start of a new school term at any time. So it’s a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to mea­sure and say, well, this slow­down is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the SOE. In ad­di­tion to it, the new year al­so brings Car­ni­val right around the cor­ner and Trinida­di­ans are more prone to di­rect their funds to the fetes, so our num­bers in terms of a per­cent­age of traf­fic is gen­er­al­ly where it is for the first week of the new year,” Lorde ex­plained.

Mean­while, Hol­land Bronte Tin­kew, CEO of Cli­co Cred­it Union, speak­ing on be­half of Or­tanique Vil­la and the La Co­terie Vil­la in To­ba­go ad­vised that sev­er­al months ago, there was one can­cel­la­tion on the ba­sis of crime on the is­land.

Since then, he said, there have been no oth­er can­cel­la­tions, adding that that there are no signs of a neg­a­tive ef­fect due to crime or the SoE.

Like­wise, the man­age­ment of Plume­ria Inn in To­ba­go al­so at­test­ed there has not been a de­cline in busi­ness due to crime or the SoE.

James Bap­tiste, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Bethel Cred­it Union, To­ba­go, and whose mem­bers ei­ther op­er­ate a guest house or bed and break­fast busi­ness­es have not, to date, re­port­ed any neg­a­tive fall-out due to crime on the is­land or the SoE.

In fact, he said, they con­tin­ue to op­er­ate suc­cess­ful­ly and their re­la­tion­ship with the cred­it union re­main strong.

Bap­tiste, how­ev­er, said he con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments and re­mains ready to ad­vise and guide the mem­bers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League, which is its um­brel­la as­so­ci­a­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the TTC­SI Di­ane Joseph said while the or­gan­i­sa­tion un­der­stood the mag­ni­tude of the task to curb crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, it sup­ports the call of the T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion for ear­ly steps to be tak­en to pur­sue dam­age-con­trol strate­gies so that vis­i­tors will ob­tain a bal­anced per­spec­tive of the sit­u­a­tion in T&T and thus re­main in­ter­est­ed in com­ing here.

“This, if care­ful­ly pur­sued, will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the ser­vices sec­tor and all of T&T,” Joseph said adding, “We com­mend the re­sults of ac­tions tak­en thus far un­der the SoE, but re­main cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic as there re­mains some as­pects of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty that con­tin­ues, such as re­cent re­ports of rob­beries and home in­va­sions. We there­fore, re­main op­ti­mistic that the ef­forts of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty forces will be strength­ened as the trend de­mands.”