Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine is call­ing for for­eign trav­ellers to pay the true cost to fly be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Amid grow­ing con­cern about the lim­it­ed num­ber of flights to To­ba­go, and Caribbean Air­lines’ re­but­tal that the cost of fly­ing to To­ba­go re­sult­ed in loss­es for the com­pa­ny, even with sold-out flights, the price to fly to To­ba­go was in­creased by $50 per flight dur­ing Mon­day’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

The price on the Seabridge was raised from $50 to $75 one way for a stan­dard tick­et and from $100 to $150 for a pre­mi­um tick­et, while pen­sion­ers who pre­vi­ous­ly trav­elled for free will now be charged $25 one way.

The price in­creas­es will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, that the cur­rent sub­sidy stood at $100m.

“I pro­pose to in­crease the cost of in­ter-is­land air trav­el for all tick­ets by $50 as fol­lows. The one-way fare on the air­bridge will now move from $150 to $200. The es­ti­mat­ed in­crease in an­nu­al rev­enue to Caribbean air­lines for the op­er­a­tion of the air bridge will be $50m, which with this in­creased price will still re­quire a sub­sidy of the air bridge by over $50 mil­lion a year,” said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

The Chief Sec­re­tary felt there was an­oth­er way to ad­dress the gap in the costs for Caribbean Air­lines.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s post bud­get show, the Chief Sec­re­tary said, “I think the first con­sid­er­a­tion we have to make is, ask­ing whether the sub­sidy should be avail­able to for­eign­ers, to in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors,” said Au­gus­tine, “I think in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors are ok with pay­ing what the re­al fare is.

“I think the first con­sid­er­a­tion we must make is whether or not we wish to keep the sub­sidy for our in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors.”

Au­gus­tine’s sug­ges­tion was chal­lenged by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning, who asked if such a move could have a detri­men­tal im­pact on tourism.

Man­ning asked, “If tourists are the life’s blood of To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, why would you want to pe­nalise tourists for com­ing to To­ba­go?”

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine be­lieved such a move would not be seen as a penal­ty by tourists as he point­ed out that sev­er­al coun­tries around the world did not of­fer sub­sidised trav­el to tourists with­in its bor­ders, in­clud­ing some of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cari­com coun­ter­parts like Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas.

“I don’t see it as pe­nal­is­ing tourists for com­ing to To­ba­go. Tourists are ac­cus­tomed all over the world to that sort of fare, if you look at what it costs to fly be­tween the is­lands in the Ba­hamas, they pay it. Once you have a good tourist prod­uct, they will come,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary felt that there should be greater di­a­logue with Caribbean Air­lines and the In­ter-Is­land Fer­ry ser­vice to en­sure that there are ad­e­quate trips be­tween the is­lands to sup­port the tourism sec­tor.

He said,” If you talk to the prac­ti­tion­ers in the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go, they will tell you that they ex­pe­ri­ence quite a lot of can­cel­la­tions be­cause peo­ple just can­not get ac­cess. Even with the Car­ni­val that is com­ing up lat­er in Oc­to­ber, the re­sound­ing cry is peo­ple say­ing we can­not get tick­ets to fly up. Or to say that they are all sold out.”

He point­ed out that be­fore the pan­dem­ic there were 24 round trips made by Caribbean Air­lines be­tween the is­lands while now there are on­ly 12.

He said, “So the load is prac­ti­cal­ly half of what it was pri­or to COVID, so the point is not so much whether or not there are avail­able planes or avail­able boats or fer­ries and the point I was mak­ing is that we need to work out with Caribbean Air­lines, with the fer­ry ser­vice, an eco­nom­i­cal­ly ben­e­fi­cial way through which we can in­crease the of­fer­ings be­cause we ap­pre­ci­ate that for every flight up and down some sub­si­dies are at­tached to that.”

Caribbean Air­lines said that the op­er­a­tional costs for the air­bridge in June 2022 to­talled US$18,777,648 with the cost per flight hour stand­ing at US$17,306

The air­line said, “The high costs are dri­ven by the fre­quen­cy of flights and the short dis­tance (52 miles) lead­ing to an un­de­sir­able low block hour util­i­sa­tion of air­craft and crews and main­te­nance costs—US$17,306 per flight hour. Nonethe­less, the do­mes­tic sched­ule (in­clu­sive of peak trav­el pe­ri­ods) con­sid­ers the es­sen­tial na­ture of the ser­vice, events and ac­tiv­i­ties in To­ba­go, the to­tal num­ber of pas­sen­gers over a twelve-month pe­ri­od and oth­er in­for­ma­tion rel­e­vant to its op­er­a­tion.”