Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James has called for more clar­i­ty con­cern­ing the de­ci­sion not to re­new Vir­gin At­lantic’s con­tract for di­rect flights be­tween Lon­don and To­ba­go.

Last week both the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) and the air­line put out state­ments con­firm­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of its Lon­don to To­ba­go ser­vice at the end of this year.

In the TTAL re­lease, it was stat­ed, “The re­turn on in­vest­ment for the Vir­gin At­lantic air­lift sub­sidy fund­ed by the pub­lic sec­tor has been de­te­ri­o­rat­ing steadi­ly over the years, to the point where the re­new­al of their con­tract could not be log­i­cal­ly de­fend­ed and ex­e­cut­ed.”

James said the de­ci­sion is wor­ry­ing es­pe­cial­ly as the is­land is at­tempt­ing to re­cov­er in the tourism sec­tor fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“To­ba­go’s for­eign tourist in­flow is in the dumps to­day, but it is known that an in­creas­ing num­ber of seats on of­fer could help to boost it over time.

“In­creas­ing seat op­por­tu­ni­ties stim­u­late com­pe­ti­tion among car­ri­ers, dri­ve down tick­et prices and en­cour­age growth of seat de­mand over time. In­creas­ing ar­rivals are what would val­i­date the re­cent de­ci­sions to in­vest in more ho­tel room stock and cre­ate good jobs in To­ba­go’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor,” said James.

“So, aban­don­ment of a route or dis­cour­age­ment of a car­ri­er has enor­mous po­ten­tial spillover ef­fects on the de­vel­op­ment of the To­ba­go des­ti­na­tion. Such a de­ci­sion should be tak­en to­geth­er with all stake­hold­ers. There are clear­ly se­ri­ous ques­tions to be an­swered about the Vir­gin de­ci­sion and a sketchy press re­lease is not good enough.”

James said the pub­lic should be in­formed if there was any chance of sal­vaging the deal or adopt­ing a dif­fer­ent ap­proach giv­en these con­cerns.

He asked, “Why aban­don rather than re­struc­ture the deal? What are the oth­er el­e­ments of the des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing pro­gram in­to which Vir­gin fit­ted? Over what years was the de­cline ev­i­dent? Did the de­cline be­gin be­fore COVID-19 came along, or af­ter?

What ex­act­ly went wrong? What are the de­mo­graph­ics of the source mar­kets in Britain and Eu­rope that were tar­get­ed by the Vir­gin pro­gram? Was there a mis­align­ment around de­mo­graph­ics that led to un­hap­py vis­i­tors and a fall in vis­its ac­cord­ing­ly?”

James won­dered if the de­ci­sion al­so re­flect­ed what To­ba­go of­fered ver­sus the ex­pec­ta­tion of tourists and fur­ther won­dered if the sug­ges­tion that the planned tourism ex­pan­sion pro­ject­ed could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed by what is left fol­low­ing Vir­gin’s ex­it.

“We know that if the Vir­gin vis­i­tors came ex­pect­ing “clean, green and serene” pink beach­es and found crime-in­fest­ed night-life, blue sand, and man­groves on ar­rival, they would be un­hap­py, might not come back, and might dis­cour­age their friends. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, why does it make sense to re­ly on British Air­ways and the Air­bridge alone to meet the air­lift needs of a des­ti­na­tion if you want it to grow above 100,000 in the next five years?”

He said the de­ci­sion to end Vir­gin’s con­tract, should have been done with the in­put of stake­hold­ers in To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor.

He said, “The de­ci­sion by Ms Ed­wards re­minds us that when pub­lic ser­vants take de­ci­sions on se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy is­sues that con­front the peo­ple of To­ba­go, it is in the best in­ter­est of the pub­lic that the THA con­sid­ers the de­ci­sions open­ly, give stake­hold­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to weigh in, and then set­tle the mat­ter with votes in the ple­nary.

“Fur­ther, it is in To­ba­go’s best in­ter­est that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple should de­ter­mine the out­comes of those votes, not the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil nor its agen­cies.”