The World Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion des­ig­nat­ed World Tourism Day 2021 on Sep­tem­ber 27 as a day to fo­cus on Tourism for In­clu­sive Growth, cel­e­brat­ing tourism’s pow­er to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for every­one. The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed com­mem­o­rat­ed World Tourism Day this year with sus­tain­abil­i­ty mile­stones borne out of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the is­land’s stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing two more Green Key awards and a coastal tree plant­i­ng ini­tia­tive.

Last month, Na­tive Abode and Ad­ven­ture Eco Vil­la were award­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Green Key eco-la­bel. These two tourism ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties, along with Ba­nanaquit and Shep­herd’s Inn (award­ed in Oc­to­ber 2020), are cur­rent­ly the on­ly Green Key cer­ti­fied sites in the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Caribbean.

Green Key is an in­ter­na­tion­al vol­un­tary eco-la­bel award­ed to tourism ac­com­mo­da­tions and oth­er hos­pi­tal­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties that com­mit to sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices, and are help­ing to make a dif­fer­ence on an en­vi­ron­men­tal lev­el. This des­ig­na­tion sig­nals to tourists that these es­tab­lish­ments ad­here to strict cri­te­ria as stip­u­lat­ed by the Foun­da­tion for En­vi­ron­men­tal Ed­u­ca­tion (FEE), em­pow­er­ing po­ten­tial guests to help make a dif­fer­ence in re­gards to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion with their choice.

Owner and nanager of Adventure Eco Villas Ean Mackay is joined by a member of staff to accept the Green Key Award from Michelle Lewis of Green T&T and Kirsten Cowie-Irvine of TTAL.

The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) man­ages the ex­e­cu­tion of Green Key in To­ba­go in part­ner­ship with na­tion­al pro­gramme co­or­di­na­tor Green T&T. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both or­gan­i­sa­tions vis­it­ed the win­ning prop­er­ties on Sep­tem­ber 23 and 24 to de­liv­er the well-earned awards to the prop­er­ty own­ers, and de­liv­er heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions.

An­cil Den­nis, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion, al­so ex­tend­ed his con­grat­u­la­tions to the awardees stat­ing: “I must com­mend the man­age­ment and staff of both prop­er­ties for the con­sid­er­able work put in­to en­sur­ing that they op­er­ate with­in the high­est stan­dards of en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. De­spite the myr­i­ad of chal­lenges brought about by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, they have cer­tain­ly per­se­vered to in­crease the val­ue of their of­fer­ings.

The awards came on the verge of World Tourism Day 2021 cel­e­bra­tions which has as its theme “Tourism for In­clu­sive Growth”.

TTAL part­nered with en­vi­ron­men­tal NGO Green T&T and lo­cal tourism stake­hold­ers to ini­ti­ate the LEAF (Learn­ing About Forests) “plant a tree for peace” pro­gramme in To­ba­go on Sep­tem­ber 23 dur­ing the lead-up to World Tourism Day.

Students from the Black Rock Government School plant trees at King’s Bay.

LEAF is an en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion and con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme for school chil­dren in sus­tain­able-mind­ed des­ti­na­tions across the world, in­clud­ing To­ba­go. The tree plant­i­ng ini­tia­tive took place at two of To­ba­go’s three Blue Flag pi­lot beach­es—Bloody Bay and the Mt Irvine.

Of­fi­cials from TTAL’s Prod­uct De­vel­op­ment and Des­ti­na­tion Man­age­ment team joined up with Green T&T, stu­dents from the Black Rock Gov­ern­ment School, of­fi­cials from the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion, and Cap­tain Kirth from Top Catch High-Speed Cata­ma­ran to plant trees pro­vid­ed by the Di­vi­sion of Food Pro­duc­tion, Forestry and Fish­eries.