Last Thurs­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came the first Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­try in the Caribbean to host the CA­PA Air­line Leader Sum­mit for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The event, held at the Hy­att Re­gency by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, has been a vi­sion Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan for six years.

“In 2017, the Min­istry of Works took the de­ci­sion that we should re­al­ly be pro­mot­ing the avi­a­tion sec­tor and the mar­itime sec­tor be­cause those two sec­tors fall un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. Im­me­di­ate­ly we en­gaged the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion and the com­mit­tee that deals with the sign­ing of the air ser­vices agree­ments, and told them that, look, we need to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op this sec­tor,” said Sinanan, in a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ties and the con­fer­ence or­gan­is­ers.

He stressed with this in mind that the Gov­ern­ment has been in­vest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly in up­grad­ing the Air­ports and ad­ja­cent fa­cil­i­ties in a bid to make T&T more at­trac­tive to var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try.

“The Gov­ern­ment would have spent a lot of mon­ey on in­fra­struc­ture over the last cou­ple of years. We have the ex­pan­sion of the To­ba­go air­port from just a do­mes­tic air­port to the in­ter­na­tion­al cat­e­go­ry stan­dard, which we are hop­ing to achieve by the end of Jan­u­ary,” said Sinanan, “We ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to cre­ate the at­mos­phere in the air­port to add val­ue to it, where you’re bring­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers who could ac­tu­al­ly com­ple­ment the air­port fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to, ho­tels, trans­porta­tion, the re­pairs of en­gines, car­go han­dling etc.”

Af­ter the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go was suc­cess­ful in con­vinc­ing CA­PA to come to T&T, Sinanan was con­fi­dent that sell­ing oth­er as­pects of this coun­try, apart from tra­di­tion­al tourism, could sway air­lines to look at T&T as a fu­ture busi­ness des­ti­na­tion.

“A con­ver­sa­tion that start­ed six years ago has now come to our doorsteps and we are hop­ing from this we can at­tract more con­fer­ences of this na­ture for the avi­a­tion sec­tor,” said Sinanan.

There have been sev­er­al pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments, which have been an­nounced about air­lift to T&T re­cent­ly. In Ju­ly, ul­tra-low-fare air­line Fron­tier an­nounced ser­vices be­tween this coun­try and Puer­to Ri­co, while Unit­ed Air­lines an­nounced it would be re­sum­ing ser­vice from Port-of-Spain to New Jer­sey for the Christ­mas sea­son.

Sinanan con­firmed that T&T has seen a steady in­crease in in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors for the past two years.

“My in­for­ma­tion is that we are back up to the lev­els that we were be­fore the pan­dem­ic. Things are hap­pen­ing. It’s ac­tu­al­ly grow­ing. That is why we are so proud, and we feel so con­fi­dent that we can show­case Trinidad, we can show­case the op­por­tu­ni­ties that we have here be­cause we are at­tract­ing more and more air­lines. You recog­nised Fron­tier just a cou­ple of weeks ago, and there are some oth­er air­lines, both pas­sen­ger and car­go, that we will be an­nounc­ing very soon,” said Sinanan.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hay­den New­ton, con­firmed that in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors to this coun­try have been on the up for both is­lands.

“The growth in the pas­sen­ger num­bers post-COVID has been very ro­bust. Be­tween 2022 and 2023 the in­crease was like 38 per cent and in­to 2024, it has been up for the first six months of 2024. The growth be­tween 2023 and 2024 would have been some­thing like 18 per cent. We don’t want to say we’re burst­ing at the seams, but we have seen sig­nif­i­cant growth in the pas­sen­ger num­bers. And this is both at Pi­ar­co and ANR. ANR is not as large as Pi­ar­co, but cer­tain­ly the in­ter­na­tion­al num­bers are there as they have re­bound­ed,” New­ton agreed.

CA­PA’s de­ci­sion to come to Trinidad was a pos­i­tive sign as the AATT is ea­ger to dis­cuss fu­ture part­ner­ships, New­ton said.

“Be­cause we have the lead­ers in the air­line in­dus­try here who have come to T&T. We have pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion to them with re­spect to the busi­ness case, be­cause that’s what they’re in­ter­est­ed in. This is a busi­ness. The busi­ness case that T&T is a des­ti­na­tion that they should con­sid­er. We have air­lines from Latin Amer­i­ca, from North Amer­i­ca, from Cana­da. We have air­lines as far as the Mid­dle East who have, in fact, tak­en up the op­por­tu­ni­ty that CA­PA has pro­vid­ed and have come to T&T to have con­ver­sa­tions with us. And we’ll take ad­van­tage of that op­por­tu­ni­ty,” said New­ton, who al­so ex­plained that should T&T im­press as a host for the event, an im­me­di­ate busi­ness tourism boost could come as CA­PA would con­sid­er T&T as a fu­ture des­ti­na­tion for oth­er con­fer­ences un­der its purview.

This was a point that was high­light­ed by Mar­co Navar­ria, glob­al con­tent and mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor for CA­PA, who said the ini­tial feed­back from CA­PA con­cern­ing T&T was pos­i­tive.

“The growth po­ten­tial for this re­gion is re­al­ly what was high­light­ed to CA­PA, and that we need to be rep­re­sent­ed here as well. We have done oth­er things in the Caribbean pre­vi­ous­ly, but as men­tioned, not quite for an Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries, and re­al­ly not dri­ving this lev­el of growth op­por­tu­ni­ty that’s avail­able,” said Navar­ria.

“When we take that po­si­tion, look­ing at where we’re go­ing to host an event, work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry and the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty here, there are a few dif­fer­ent things that we need to high­light. Are our del­e­gates go­ing to get val­ue out of com­ing to the event? T&T def­i­nite­ly has giv­en them that. The hos­pi­tal­i­ty that we’ve al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced has been in­cred­i­ble. “

Navar­ria told the Busi­ness Guardian, “There’s po­ten­tial to look at oth­er themes. We al­so have a sus­tain­abil­i­ty event that we do glob­al­ly as well around the world. So there’s, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties to po­ten­tial­ly look at oth­er themes, as op­posed to just specif­i­cal­ly, the avi­a­tion in­dus­try in this re­gion.”

Sinanan stressed that the host­ing of the event was not sole­ly tied to bring­ing tourists to Trinidad, but al­so boost­ing its vi­a­bil­i­ty as a trans­porta­tion hub and at­tract­ing in­vestors to oth­er sec­tors.

“This will def­i­nite­ly do a lot for us here in Trinidad, not on­ly in the tourism sec­tor, but al­so in the busi­ness sec­tor. What we try to show­case to the dif­fer­ent air­lines that have vis­it­ed us on this trip is T&T is a des­ti­na­tion where you have an en­er­gy sec­tor, you have the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, and we have a very good tourism prod­uct,” said Sinanan.

“So it’s an area where we’re try­ing to at­tract, in­vestors, try­ing to at­tract air­lines. And we al­so have that we’re show­cas­ing at this con­fer­ence, is the air­drome at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port where we are hop­ing to have some sort of in­ter­est as we go for­ward in de­vel­op­ing the Aeropark at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.”

With re­gard to the Aeropark, Sinanan said a re­quest for pro­pos­al con­cern­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the next phase of the Aeropark is set to be sent out by No­vem­ber.