Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

KEY POINTS

* Few­er flight com­ing to T&T a year af­ter bor­ders re­opened

* Jet Blue, West Jet, Suri­name Air­lines im­pact­ed

* Do­mes­tic Air­bridge al­so hurt be less air­lift

* Tourism Min­is­ter says search on for ad­di­tion­al air­lines to come to T&T

It’s been just over one year since the coun­try’s bor­ders were re­opened fol­low­ing the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which has crip­pled the trav­el and air­line sec­tors, glob­al­ly.

And while trav­el has re­sumed the lo­cal air­line in­dus­try con­tin­ues to slow­ly re­cov­er as re­flect­ed in sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed from the Tourism Min­istry.

It showed that to­tal flights in­to Trinidad from Ju­ly 2018 to June 2019 was 15, 992.

How­ev­er, that fig­ure dras­ti­cal­ly de­creased as from Ju­ly 2021 to June 2022 there were 7, 197 flights; a dif­fer­ence of about 55 per cent.

Flights in­to To­ba­go al­so took a hit as from Ju­ly 2018 to June 2019 there were 381 com­pared to Ju­ly 2021 to June 2022 where on­ly 112 were record­ed; a re­duc­tion of 71 per cent.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, flights from Trinidad were al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.

From Ju­ly 2018 to June 2019 there were 15, 364 flights from Trinidad com­pared to 7, 243 for Ju­ly 2021 to June 2022.

There was al­so a marked dif­fer­ence in flights from To­ba­go as from Ju­ly 2018 to June 2019 that fig­ure was 366 as op­posed to 111 for Ju­ly 2021 to June 2022.

How­ev­er, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell re­mains pos­i­tive as he told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that up­on the re­open­ing of bor­ders in Ju­ly 2021, air­lines have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to re­sume flights to T&T.

He not­ed, there was the sus­tained re­sump­tion in flights from car­ries like Air Cana­da, Amer­i­can Air­lines, British Air­ways, Co­pa Air­lines and Jet Blue.

In ad­di­tion, KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines restart­ed its ser­vice in Oc­to­ber 2021 af­ter an ab­sence of al­most 30 years and so far has been record­ing load fac­tors in the neigh­bour­hood of 75 per cent, the min­is­ter said.

The route is cur­rent­ly shared with St Maarten how­ev­er, when it was first launched, the ser­vice was shared with Bar­ba­dos, Mitchell ex­plained.

To­ba­go al­so saw the re­turn of Vir­gin At­lantic out of Lon­don via An­tigua and British Air­ways al­so from Lon­don via An­tigua.

But the Tourism Min­is­ter al­so not­ed some air­lines left T&T.

For in­stance, Cana­di­an air­line West­Jet has tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed flights to Trinidad along with Jet­Blue (Fort Laud­erdale-Trinidad route) and Unit­ed Air­lines (Newark-Trinidad route) un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Suri­name Air­ways al­so de­cid­ed to sus­pend its ser­vices af­ter 29 years due to or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes and re­struc­tur­ing.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian sent sev­er­al ques­tions to Jet­Blue in­clud­ing whether T&T re­mains a fea­si­ble op­tion for the air­line at this time.

Jet­Blue’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions team said, “As part of on­go­ing re­fine­ments to our sched­ule, Jet­Blue is sus­pend­ing routes and mak­ing ad­just­ments to help re­duce fly­ing that does not make as much sense in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment of sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er fu­el prices.

“Jet­Blue will sus­pend op­er­a­tions be­tween Port-of-Spain, T&T and Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da from Oc­to­ber-De­cem­ber. These ad­just­ments help sup­port op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­i­ty and im­prove sched­ules else­where in our net­work, en­sur­ing we get our cus­tomers where they need to go.”

Suri­name Air­ways al­so of­fi­cial­ly sus­pend­ed its ser­vices to Trinidad on May 23.

“The de­par­ture from Port-of-Spain as any oth­er re­struc­tur­ing and or­gan­i­sa­tion de­vel­op­ment process, is a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion for us to sus­pend op­er­a­tions to Trinidad mar­ket af­ter 29 years ser­vic­ing the peo­ple of this beau­ti­ful is­land.

“Our heart is sad­dened that we have to sep­a­rate from the over three decades of re­la­tion­ship with our gen­er­al sales agent (GSA), loy­al staff, com­mit­ted peo­ple, trav­el agents, and au­thor­i­ties of this des­ti­na­tion,” Suri­name Air­ways had said.

Mitchell said all of these dis­rup­tions are, pre­sum­ably, as a con­se­quence of the pan­dem­ic but added that the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try is slow­ly re­or­gan­is­ing its re­sources to per­form with great­est ef­fi­cien­cies.

He al­so not­ed that al­though Con­dor Air­lines did not im­me­di­ate­ly de­cide to restart, its ser­vice will re­sume the Frank­furt to To­ba­go route on No­vem­ber 20, 2022.

On whether he was sat­is­fied with the cur­rent num­ber of air­lines cur­rent­ly com­ing to Trinidad the Tourism Min­is­ter said, “The num­ber of air­lines is not of too much con­cern but rather the num­ber of qual­i­ty routes, pas­sen­ger traf­fic, and con­nec­tions in­to the des­ti­na­tion.”

He said at­tract­ing the right air­line and the right type of traf­fic is a very strate­gic ac­tiv­i­ty that will give T&T the “right type of vis­i­tor, with the right type of spend at the right vol­ume.”

This, the Tourism Min­is­ter em­pha­sised, will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact mea­sures such as vis­i­tor re­ceipts, ho­tel rev­enue and the tourism sec­tor’s over­all con­tri­bu­tion to GDP.

Caribbean Air­lines al­so con­tin­ues to re­cov­er as glob­al­ly, air pas­sen­ger vol­umes are still be­low pre-pan­dem­ic 2019 lev­els, said Dionne Ligoure CAL’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Head.

“Sea­son­al­ly, there is move­ment be­cause Ju­ly/Au­gust is typ­i­cal­ly an ac­tive time for trav­el based on the fact that in many parts of the world it is an off-sea­son for schools and fam­i­lies trav­el more.

‘The in­dus­try ex­perts com­ing out of the re­moval of re­stric­tions did pre­dict that trav­el would not re­al­ly re­turn to pre-COVID lev­els un­til 2023/2024 which is why 2022 is be­ing guard­ed as a year of re­cov­ery,” Ligoure ex­plained.

How­ev­er, she said CAL’s fo­cus has been to “Re­set Ex­pec­ta­tions,” adding that a ma­jor el­e­ment was its fleet re­new­al, which was com­plet­ed in Ju­ly.

The en­tire jet fleet now com­pris­es, the Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft, of­fer­ing a wide range of ben­e­fits to cus­tomers and the en­vi­ron­ment, Ligoure added.

The Tourism min­is­ter al­so out­lined that as part of the over­all strat­e­gy to fa­cil­i­tate the re­cov­ery of the sec­tor, Tourism Trinidad Ltd along with Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 27th World Routes De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum to meet de­ci­sion-mak­ers and air­line ex­ec­u­tives.

Mitchell said mar­kets key to the sec­tor have been iden­ti­fied, adding that the event has al­so been crit­i­cal in se­cur­ing in­creased ser­vices on ad­di­tion­al routes and al­so at­tract­ing new air­lines.

He said the de­ci­sion by air­lines to open routes to the is­land—West­Jet and KLM—would have been prompt­ed by talks be­tween the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty, Tourism Trinidad and air­line stake­hold­ers at sim­i­lar past trav­el and tourism events.

“We are look­ing at im­prov­ing links in­to T&T in time for sum­mer 2023. Both is­lands are in need of ex­pan­sion of its Eu­ro­pean ser­vice based on the per­for­mance of British Air­ways and KLM in­to Port-of-Spain,” the min­is­ter said.

Mitchell iden­ti­fied North Amer­i­ca as of great im­por­tance as it cur­rent­ly ac­counts for al­most 45 per cent of vis­i­tor traf­fic, in par­tic­u­lar the “vis­it­ing friends and rel­a­tives seg­ment,” large­ly made-up of the di­as­po­ra.

Not­ing that the T&T di­as­po­ra is an un­tapped mar­ket, Mitchell said Tourism Trinidad in its mar­ket­ing ef­forts will be re­spon­si­ble for lever­ag­ing these valu­able fa­mil­ial con­nec­tions to dri­ve more traf­fic to the des­ti­na­tion.

Re­gard­ing plans to boost the air­line ca­pac­i­ty and grow vis­i­tor ar­rivals Mitchell said his min­istry will con­tin­ue to en­gage pas­sen­ger air­lines and char­ter ser­vices to strate­gi­cal­ly pack­age and sell the des­ti­na­tion.

He added char­ters will pro­vide more flex­i­bil­i­ty, giv­ing des­ti­na­tions di­rect ac­cess to tar­get­ed catch­ment ar­eas with non-stop con­nec­tions.

To­ba­go is al­so in­stru­men­tal in at­tract­ing ar­rivals.

Mitchell said al­though To­ba­go at­tracts a dif­fer­ent type of vis­i­tor, the think­ing is the same.

“The To­ba­go mar­ket is based heav­i­ly on leisure there­fore, these mar­kets must be tar­get­ed to dri­ve de­mand and book­ings for what To­ba­go has to of­fer. The di­rect flight from New York to To­ba­go, the new air­port ter­mi­nal, and the soon to be com­plet­ed Com­fort Inn Suites and the con­struc­tion of the Mar­riott at Rocky Bay should dri­ve de­mand for the des­ti­na­tion,” the Tourism min­is­ter ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts will con­tin­ue to sup­port the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ease of trav­el to To­ba­go.

“To this end, we would have met with all agen­cies to dis­cuss smoothen­ing out the tran­sit process be­tween T&T par­tic­u­lar­ly since air­lines such as KLM and British Air­ways fly from key mar­kets in Eu­rope and act as a hub for oth­er parts of Eu­rope,” Mitchell said.

He added that Caribbean Air­lines was al­so part of the dis­cus­sions as its co­op­er­a­tion is nec­es­sary in pro­vid­ing ac­cess from Trinidad to To­ba­go at con­ve­nient trav­el times to en­sure pas­sen­gers get the most out of their stay in To­ba­go.