An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go arm of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing Movi­eTowne’s pend­ing clo­sure an­oth­er stark re­minder of the is­land’s strug­gling econ­o­my.

Cham­ber chair­man Cur­tis Williams de­scribed the move as un­sur­pris­ing but deeply trou­bling, re­flect­ing the wider slow­down grip­ping To­ba­go’s pri­vate sec­tor.
“Read­ing the news about Movi­eTowne be­ing closed, it re­al­ly just con­firms what we’ve been see­ing for some time,” Williams told the Guardian Me­dia. “Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin had in­di­cat­ed last year that busi­ness wasn’t do­ing well, and that he might have to make a de­ci­sion to close. Now we’re see­ing it hap­pen, and it shows clear­ly what’s go­ing on in the space in To­ba­go.”

Williams said busi­ness­es across the is­land have been “very slug­gish,” not­ing that con­sumer spend­ing has tight­ened con­sid­er­ably, forc­ing many op­er­a­tors to scale down or shut their doors en­tire­ly. He said it was crit­i­cal that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bis­sear, who vis­it­ed the is­land yes­ter­day, meets di­rect­ly with mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to un­der­stand the depth of the chal­lenges. “It’s im­por­tant that she and her Cab­i­net hear di­rect­ly from those on the ground,” Williams said. “The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) alone can’t paint the full pic­ture. Busi­ness­es need to ex­plain what’s re­al­ly hap­pen­ing.”

Chin con­firmed that the ven­ture nev­er man­aged to gain sus­tain­able trac­tion de­spite years of ef­fort.

“We gave it a good run for many years,” Chin said, not­ing that even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, the To­ba­go out­let was bare­ly break­ing even. “It just nev­er re­al­ly caught on. We tried every­thing to at­tract To­bag­o­ni­ans and busi­ness­es, but it didn’t im­prove, and af­ter COVID, it got worse.”

Opened nine years ago as Movi­eTowne’s sec­ond mul­ti­plex, the To­ba­go branch was meant to serve as a ma­jor en­ter­tain­ment hub for the sis­ter isle. How­ev­er, the shift to home stream­ing, cou­pled with re­duced movie re­lease win­dows, has cut in­to cin­e­ma prof­itabil­i­ty world­wide. Chin ex­plained that the in­dus­try now faces re­lease cy­cles as short as three weeks be­fore films ap­pear on­line, leav­ing lit­tle time for cin­e­mas to re­coup in­vest­ments.

The To­ba­go op­er­a­tion, which em­ployed few­er than ten part-time work­ers, will con­tin­ue screen­ing through the Christ­mas sea­son be­fore clos­ing ear­ly next year. Chin said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with the land­lord about whether an­oth­er op­er­a­tor may take over the space.

“It doesn’t make eco­nom­ic sense to keep up­grad­ing equip­ment when the turnover isn’t there,” he said, point­ing to the high cost of pro­jec­tors and screens that now need re­place­ment.

“We’ve held on as long as we could out of pa­tri­o­tism, but the num­bers just don’t sup­port it.”

Chin al­so dis­missed the idea that To­ba­go’s tourism could have sus­tained the cin­e­ma, not­ing that vis­i­tors rarely at­tend and that busi­ness on­ly spikes when Trinida­di­ans vis­it the is­land.

Still, he said the rest of the Movi­eTowne group re­mains sta­ble, though over­all per­for­mance has been sub­dued in re­cent months. The com­pa­ny is in­creas­ing­ly fo­cused on build­ing out its en­ter­tain­ment and lifestyle of­fer­ings be­yond film.

“We have to make Movi­eTowne not on­ly about movies but about en­ter­tain­ment and leisure,” he said.

While To­ba­go has fal­tered, Chin point­ed to suc­cess else­where. “Guyana is do­ing very well,” he not­ed, with Movi­eTowne’s George­town com­plex ful­ly ten­ant­ed and at­tract­ing steady crowds.