The ma­jor tourism de­vel­op­ments that have tak­en place in the com­mu­ni­ty of Paramin in the last two years may be Trinidad’s best-kept, open se­cret.

Every Christ­mas, the leg­end of Paramin’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty would be her­ald­ed in song, while many would speak of the need to vis­it to ex­pe­ri­ence the vil­lage’s blue dev­ils in full flow, or around the year, you may have heard a col­league speak of the need to get prop­er sea­son­ing from the hills.

Since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Paramin’s po­ten­tial as one of T&T’s most pop­u­lar va­ca­tion and get­away spots has been re­alised.

Paramin tour op­er­a­tor Cor­nelius Car­los Fe­li­cian ex­plained that the area saw a surge in ac­tiv­i­ty as soon as the La Vigie look­out was of­fi­cial­ly opened in 2022.

“The La Vigie look­out was es­tab­lished, next month will make it two years, and since then we have re­alised a large in­flux of peo­ple com­ing in and out of vil­lage. It has done well for the com­mu­ni­ty where it up­lift some of per­sons who were just there and they want­ed some­thing ex­tra to do,” said Fe­li­cian, who ex­plained the in­crease in vis­i­tors has seen him shift his base of op­er­a­tions.

“Peo­ple like my­self, al­though I do tours, I used to do tours out of Port-of-Spain. Now I am based ba­si­cal­ly in Paramin,” said Fe­li­cian.

Podes­ta Con­stan­tine, a farmer and tour guide, told Sun­day Busi­ness she was con­tact­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism ahead of the com­ple­tion of La Vigie but had no idea the look­out’s in­tro­duc­tion would change the tourism dy­nam­ics so sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“I have been do­ing this for 20-plus years. No­body knew be­cause it was a se­cret. When the Min­istry called me to ask about the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing, (I knew) they were em­bark­ing on some­thing and well I told them,” said Con­stan­tine, “ Since the look­out opened, it was like the sun just start­ed shin­ing.”

She con­tin­ued, “It was shin­ing all the time but it came out brighter and all over Trinidad I have been get­ting calls every day. I have to take off my phone in the evening.”

La Vigie how­ev­er was just one part of the puz­zle, as the pop­u­lar­i­ty of var­i­ous bed and break­fast spots in the area al­so drew new vis­i­tors to the area as trav­el-starved lo­cals searched for stay­ca­tion spots, which of­fered an es­cape from the reg­u­lar.

This trend caught the eye of Jean-Claude Cour­nand, who him­self came to the area to vis­it at that time.

Last month, he opened his new busi­ness in the area: a house named Paramin Sky that was built as an Airbnb short-term prop­er­ty.

“Long be­fore the La Vigie look­out it was a place that was known as one of the most beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and dur­ing COVID there was a short­age of lo­cal stays. There were many places in Paramin that were ful­ly booked. One is the La Vapeur Es­tate. By the look­out, there’s North Deck, there’s Ma­hogany Ridge and Bridge Cab­in,” said Cour­nand, who ex­plained he had been on the look­out for a busi­ness ven­ture af­ter re­turn­ing from stud­ies abroad, so when an op­por­tu­ni­ty arose to pur­chase a plot of land in the area he leapt at the chance.

“I saw there was in­ter­est in Paramin from the per­spec­tive of peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly want­i­ng to book these places to stay.”

Putting to­geth­er Paramin Sky, which hous­es vis­i­tors in a self-con­tained apart­ment with a view, sus­pend­ed 1,600 feet above the sea and hill­side, took a team ef­fort and pooled re­sources.

Cour­nand said he hoped to cre­ate a space with a unique ex­pe­ri­ence akin to the ex­ot­ic va­ca­tion spots seen across the world to bring a new at­ten­tion to the area.

“We want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. We didn’t want to do a tra­di­tion­al stay. You could al­ways rent a house but we want­ed to de­vel­op some­thing to­tal­ly unique and cre­ate a re­al ex­pe­ri­ence. For­tu­nate­ly, where we are on this ridge, you can see above the canopy of the trees and we have the open­ness so we want­ed to leave the front as open and the view as wide as pos­si­ble,’ said Cour­nand, who ex­plained he added a bath­tub near to a hum­ming­bird feed­er to cre­ate a spe­cial bathing ex­pe­ri­ence not wide­ly ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try.

Cour­nand stands as the chair/main share­hold­er of Paramin Sky, but the vi­sion came to­geth­er via co-own­ers Giselle Mendez, Claude Cour­nand and Chanelle Cour­nand

“The busi­ness brings to­geth­er the skills of my fam­i­ly. My sis­ter and moth­er stud­ied hos­pi­tal­i­ty man­age­ment at THTI (aka ho­tel school). My moth­er is a host of the Airbnb. Both my sis­ter and moth­er are al­so mas­sage ther­a­pists and of­fer mas­sage ther­a­py ser­vices at Paramin Sky,” said Cour­nand.

The re­sponse since the Paramin Sky was launched has been im­mense. Cour­nand ex­plained that over 150 days have been booked since the web­site and so­cial me­dia pages went live.

“Every sin­gle day for Jan­u­ary is booked, every sin­gle day for Car­ni­val sea­son is booked. We on­ly have about three more days left in March, and three days left in April. We have book­ings as far down as No­vem­ber, De­cem­ber and next year, “ said Cour­nand.

How­ev­er, Cour­nand stressed that the busi­ness is not just in it for their own prof­it, but al­so cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Our Airbnb is set up as a so­cial en­ter­prise. Every month, a por­tion of the in­come of our Airbnb goes to­wards tak­ing a new group of peo­ple who have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced Paramin be­fore,” said Cour­nand, who in­di­cat­ed he has con­nect­ed with el­der­ly homes and schools in that re­gard.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he en­cour­ages his vis­i­tors to pa­tro­n­ise Paramin busi­ness­es dur­ing their stay.

“Our guests, they would go by Ms Ju­lia for break­fast when she is avail­able. We rec­om­mend them to tour guides Mr Car­los and Podes­ta, and we tell them about some many oth­er places. We even tell them about oth­er Airbnbs around. We tell them about go­ing in­to Paramin junc­tion for wings by Fitzy or fry chick­en by HFC, the bar­be­cue. We en­cour­age them not just to stay here and es­cape but stay here and ex­pe­ri­ence the peo­ple of Paramin, the cul­ture of Paramin and the beau­ty of the land­scape,” said Cour­nand.

“The vi­sion is that this is some­thing that is an ex­pe­ri­ence that you are giv­ing to peo­ple. It is a sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go that is poised for growth and de­vel­op­ment that they need peo­ple to de­vel­op. And in the com­mu­ni­ty, you could cre­ate em­ploy­ment, you could ex­pose more peo­ple to Trinidad and To­ba­go around the world,” said Cour­nand.

Fe­li­cian ex­plained that the surge has al­so helped the peo­ple of Paramin teach as­pects of its cul­ture, in­deed lost as­pects of T&T’s cul­ture, which have been pre­served in the vil­lage, to vis­i­tors.

“To­day be­cause of tours com­ing to Paramin, I have re­alised some­thing that is grow­ing more than I thought. Peo­ple used to say pa­tois (pat­wa) is dy­ing. But now I can say it is very much alive be­cause peo­ple come and we get to en­joy us­ing it and get­ting to teach them the lit­tle words that they know that they didn’t know that they know, “ said Fe­li­cian, who how­ev­er made the call for the Gov­ern­ment to al­low for the teach­ing of pa­tois in schools.

Con­stan­tine added that the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of Paramin’s tourism could be used as an ex­am­ple for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

“I want to say it could be in every area in Trinidad once they find what every area in Trinidad has to pro­mote the area,” said Con­stan­tine.

Fe­li­cian added that na­ture seek­ers have al­so flocked to Paramin as hikes to beach­es such as Para­grant Bay, Neg­mawah Bay, Cyril Bay and Saut D’eau have al­so been ma­jor draws.

How­ev­er, both Fe­li­cian and Con­stan­tine not­ed that while the in­flux of vis­i­tors has large­ly been pos­i­tive, vil­lagers are hope­ful they are de­ter­ring bad in­flu­ences with the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of­fered with­in the hills.