Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

If you are think­ing about book­ing a ho­tel room in or around Port-of-Spain for your friends and fam­i­ly to come for Car­ni­val 2020 then think again.

Be­cause, ac­cord­ing to Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL), there is no room at the inn.

A re­lease from TTL yes­ter­day said ho­tels with­in the Port-of-Spain and sur­round­ing en­vi­rons are present­ly wit­ness­ing a 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rate for Car­ni­val 2020.

In fact, some ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties in­di­cat­ed they were com­plete­ly sold out since June last year, TTL stat­ed.

“In­deed, guests have al­ready be­gan to make book­ings for Car­ni­val 2021. This year’s Jan­u­ary and Car­ni­val sea­son is even bet­ter than in 2019 as there have been very few book­ing can­cel­la­tions,” it stat­ed.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, to­geth­er with TTL chair­man Howard Chin Lee, and TTL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Hei­di Alert, host­ed a fo­rum for hote­liers on Jan­u­ary 22, to speak to Car­ni­val 2020 ex­pec­ta­tions and al­so to ad­dress any con­cerns and chal­lenges with­in the Trinidad’s ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor.

This meet­ing, which is a first in a se­ries of ho­tel fo­ra, was held at Tow­er D Lev­el 18 Con­fer­ence Room of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre.

At the meet­ing there was “strong wide­spread com­mit­ment” from the hote­liers to work with the Gov­ern­ment in col­lab­o­rat­ing to dri­ve the growth of vis­i­tor ar­rivals in the off-peak months, es­pe­cial­ly for ho­tel prop­er­ties out­side of the cap­i­tal city who have been im­pact­ed by the changes in the oil and gas sec­tor, TTL stat­ed.

“The hote­liers urged TTL to proac­tive­ly bid to host con­fer­ences and have a stronger mar­ket­ing pres­ence in world renowned con­fer­ences and oth­er busi­ness shows such as IMEX in Las Ve­gas.

“More­over, it was point­ed that more ef­fort must be placed on max­imis­ing the po­ten­tial of sports tourism in Trinidad, es­pe­cial­ly for win­ter team train­ing, giv­en the high-qual­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties at our Aquat­ic Cen­tre and Cy­cling Velo­drome and the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion for host­ing and man­ag­ing suc­cess­ful re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al events,” it stat­ed.

“This high-lev­el en­gage­ment with promi­nent ho­tels in Trinidad came at a time when the is­land has en­joyed a 3.3 per cent in­crease in ar­rivals in 2019 in com­par­i­son to 2018; af­ter three con­sec­u­tive years of de­cline (2016, 2017 and 2018). Ar­rivals in­creased in every month in 2019 ex­cept for Jan­u­ary; the largest in­crease oc­curred in the month of Oc­to­ber 2019 (+15 per cent),” the TTL stat­ed.

A to­tal of 367,119 vis­i­tors were wel­comed to Trinidad in 2019.

This was an in­crease of 11,588 tourists.

“While we cel­e­brate these small wins, we must now look for­ward to build­ing on these achieve­ments in 2020, as we con­tin­ue to work with our val­ued in­dus­try part­ners and stake­hold­ers, to fur­ther de­vel­op and en­hance Trinidad’s tourism prod­uct,” Mitchell stat­ed.