An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

Re­port­ing from An­tigua

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

For­mer To­ba­go Tourism Agency chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Louis Lewis is of the view that To­ba­go should se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er the San­dals Re­sort brand as it can be a vol­ume gen­er­a­tor.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place fo­rum in An­tigua yes­ter­day, Lewis said as it stands now, To­ba­go is not com­pet­i­tive as there is a lack of di­rect in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty with ma­jor source mar­kets.

“As a re­sult of that, To­ba­go has not been able to take ad­van­tage of huge mar­kets. To get around that, you must have an ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor that is strong, pos­i­tive, and can cause a flow of ar­rivals, and that is what a prop­er­ty like San­dals brings to the ta­ble. It’s a vol­ume gen­er­a­tor. It can help boost the econ­o­my,” he said.

Lewis, who is now the St Lu­cia’s Tourism Au­thor­i­ty CEO, al­so stat­ed that To­ba­go is go­ing to strug­gle to be com­pet­i­tive in the re­gion­al tourism mar­ket­place, as many is­lands have been up­grad­ing their ho­tel stock, and that is what is need­ed to an­chor the tourism growth on the is­land.

“Un­less that is done, it is go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult task for To­ba­go to achieve its po­ten­tial. I am for San­dals as that is the op­tion on the ta­ble now, as it is a spe­cif­ic com­pa­ny that has a high oc­cu­pan­cy lev­el, mak­ing your air­port vi­able and fos­ter­ing strong link­ages with the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. If that is not done, there would be a lost op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn much-need­ed for­eign ex­change,” Lewis out­lined.

Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Sanovnik Destang, al­so com­ment­ed on the San­dals brand’s pro­posed move to To­ba­go, say­ing that the lux­u­ry re­sort has had a tremen­dous im­pact on the des­ti­na­tions it is in.

“It had that im­pact in St Lu­cia, and we are see­ing it right now in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. There have to be oth­er dis­cus­sions that have to be had about the im­pact on so­ci­ety and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. If you look at oth­er coun­tries, the brand has been a force for the im­prove­ment of tourism and at­tracts a lot of air­lift. It’s a win-win sit­u­a­tion for the des­ti­na­tion, but more di­a­logue will be need­ed with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

Talk of re­newed San­dals’ in­ter­est in To­ba­go resur­faced in March af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced, dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal, that he had con­vinced the re­sort chain to re­con­sid­er a pos­si­ble in­vest­ment in the is­land.

Then two weeks lat­er, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with San­dals ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Adam Stew­art and To­ba­go stake­hold­ers, at which the par­ties agreed to restart dis­cus­sions with a “clean slate.”

De­spite the change of gov­ern­ment in T&T on April 28, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said that would not af­fect the is­land’s on­go­ing ef­fort to bring San­dals back—this time with a fresh plan.

Au­gus­tine said San­dals had al­ready re­ceived a let­ter from him and sev­er­al key stake­hold­ers—in­clud­ing the To­ba­go di­vi­sion of the Cham­ber of Com­merce, re­li­gious bod­ies, farm­ers, and fish­er­folk groups—wel­com­ing them back to the ta­ble.

“We wel­come any over­ture from them. From our end, we will con­tin­ue to reach out through for­mal and in­for­mal chan­nels so we keep the con­ver­sa­tion go­ing,” he said.