Tourists are trick­ling in­to To­ba­go due to the lim­it­ed num­ber of flights.

Last week, Tourism Trinidad shared the Tourism Stake­hold­ers In­for­ma­tion Month­ly Bul­letin, high­light­ing sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of vis­i­tors to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the up un­til the end of Ju­ly.

In the doc­u­ment, the num­bers seemed en­cour­ag­ing.

The en­ti­ty an­nounced, “The month of Ju­ly reg­is­tered an oc­cu­pan­cy rate of 62 per cent. This was the high­est oc­cu­pan­cy record­ed since Feb­ru­ary 2020, which was the last year Car­ni­val was cel­e­brat­ed pri­or to the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary-Ju­ly, the oc­cu­pan­cy rate av­er­aged 50 per cent.”

The post con­tin­ued, “In Ju­ly 2023, Trinidad and To­ba­go wel­comed 29,476 vis­i­tors, up 24 per cent from last month. The ma­jor­i­ty (28,352 or 96 per cent) of vis­i­tors land­ed in Trinidad with To­ba­go re­ceiv­ing just over 1,100 di­rect vis­i­tors. To­tal vis­i­tor ar­rivals for the first sev­en months of the year were 182,508.”

The post al­so con­firmed that the North Amer­i­can mar­ket con­tin­ued to be Trinidad and To­ba­go’s main source mar­ket, as it com­man­dered 62 per cent of to­tal ar­rivals over the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 2023. The post point­ed out, “oth­er no­table source mar­kets were Cari­com and Eu­rope which av­er­aged 15 per cent and 10 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, over the re­view pe­ri­od.”

The num­bers would sug­gest that there had been a sig­nif­i­cant turn­around in the lo­cal tourism in­dus­try, but a clos­er look at the fig­ures re­vealed that To­ba­go, long her­ald­ed as the tourism hub of the coun­try, did not en­joy the best share of vis­i­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, in June 23,558 vis­i­tors came to Trinidad and To­ba­go with Trinidad wel­com­ing 22,616 vis­i­tors, while on­ly 942 vis­i­tors came di­rect­ly to To­ba­go.

As not­ed above, Ju­ly a pe­ri­od known for events such as the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val, Is­land Crash­ers and Great Fete Week­end and oth­er events, on­ly saw 1,124 di­rect vis­i­tors. The month­ly chart post­ed that for the first sev­en months, the av­er­age num­ber of vis­i­tors stood at around 1,000, with on­ly Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary post­ing bet­ter num­bers than Ju­ly.

In a re­cent in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Pres­i­dent of To­ba­go’s Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Al­pha Lorde said that with­out the bump pro­vid­ed by the re­cent Youth Com­mon­wealth Games at the start of Au­gust, the is­land’s hote­liers would be look­ing at in­fe­ri­or num­bers com­pared to 2022.

“Ju­ly usu­al­ly is a lit­tle slow­er and then we have the anom­aly that is the Com­mon­wealth Games, so a num­ber of the ho­tels on the is­land would have ben­e­fit­ted from that and for those ho­tels that ben­e­fit­ted it still caused the oth­er ho­tels to have an in­crease.

“We have a mar­ket that sup­port­ed the is­land large­ly, but I think if you were to re­move that, we might be just about or be­hind last year’s fig­ures,” said Lorde.

The lim­it­ed num­bers be­ing record­ed in To­ba­go, he said, were due to the on­go­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in terms of get­ting to the is­land. Lorde had been in­ter­viewed be­fore the sick­out of Caribbean Air­lines pi­lots and the sub­se­quent can­cel­la­tion of sev­er­al flights in­clud­ing sev­er­al along the air­bridge.

How­ev­er, the is­sue had been high­light­ed as a ma­jor con­cern by sev­er­al To­ba­go busi­ness op­er­a­tors for some time, with the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber even list­ing the need for in­creased flights to To­ba­go among its bud­get rec­om­men­da­tions.

How­ev­er, Lorde not­ed that more flights al­so need­ed to come from over­seas to To­ba­go as well.

“The ho­tels are not in the great­est po­si­tion in terms of the tourist ar­rivals. In terms of tourist ar­rivals whether it be from Trinidad or in­ter­na­tion­als ar­riv­ing at the des­ti­na­tion, com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic there is some ground to be made up.

“I think al­so if we were to be re­al­is­tic the num­ber of per­sons com­ing out of Trinidad has gone down. In part, that has to do with the fact that they are able to trav­el not on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al­ly but through the Caribbean a lit­tle more freely,” said Lorde.

“But there is al­so the con­sid­er­a­tion that it is still very chal­leng­ing to get to and from To­ba­go on short no­tice. And short no­tice could be even three weeks out some­times. “Three weeks you are try­ing to find a flight and you can­not find a flight. So, I think that has and con­tin­ues to af­fect the To­ba­go hote­liers and the To­ba­go tourism prod­uct as a whole. The abil­i­ty or in­abil­i­ty I should say to get to and from the air­line, even in­ter­na­tion­al­ly be­cause we have lim­it­ed flights avail­able to us com­ing in from in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions. We have seen im­prove­ments, but we are way off the mark still. And it is not sim­ply be­cause the COVID re­cov­ery is slow. There are a lot of lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues that still con­tin­ue to af­fect the is­land.”

Lorde said de­spite these is­sues the hote­liers were look­ing to the win­ter pe­ri­od with op­ti­mism as it had tra­di­tion­al­ly been a stronger sea­son for the is­land. He hoped that by then there would be an im­prove­ment in the air­lift avail­abil­i­ty for the is­land.

“I think most hote­liers have a very pos­i­tive out­look. I think peo­ple are look­ing for­ward to the win­ter sea­son when they ex­pect the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals to pick up. We are still very op­ti­mistic, we would like to see some changes take place for sure the im­prove­ment in the lo­cal air­bridge, the im­prove­ment in the in­ter­na­tion­al flight sit­u­a­tion. We are look­ing for­ward with op­ti­mism. We are part­ner­ing with all the au­thor­i­ties, in terms of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd and the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and we are hop­ing that our col­lec­tive ef­forts that we re­al­ly put in­to last year in terms of the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket will start pay­ing some div­i­dends go­ing in­to the win­ter,” said Lorde.

But he al­so not­ed that the hote­liers faced oth­er chal­lenges in­clud­ing the ris­ing costs of goods, as well as the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of staff, as many pro­fes­sion­als opt­ed out of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try af­ter it was large­ly shut down dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Lorde stat­ed that this has caused many ho­tels to op­er­ate on less-than-op­ti­mal staffing. Still, he said, most were not ready to give up on the in­dus­try just yet.

“The is­land would have had some staffing chal­lenges. COVID-19 did not make it any eas­i­er. As a mat­ter of fact, it ex­ac­er­bat­ed the is­sues tremen­dous­ly. That is not a To­ba­go thing on­ly. If you go through­out the Caribbean, you go in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, air­lines are fac­ing crew-re­sourc­ing prob­lems,” he said.

“I think peo­ple are tak­ing blows. Some­times you can take it and there are times when you can’t take it and there are times when you can’t take it or more like­ly the case is how long can you take it for. So I don’t think any­body is think­ing this is not sus­tain­able or any­body is think­ing this is time to close up shop.”

Like Lorde, Tourism Trinidad had been look­ing for­ward to re­turns from up­com­ing events such as Trinidad’s host­ing of match­es in the Caribbean Pre­mier League, while al­so look­ing to­wards the num­bers from the re­cent cel­e­bra­tions sur­round­ing the re­cent­ly com­mem­o­rat­ed World Steel­pan Day.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for a com­ment on the sta­tis­tics re­port­ed by Tourism Trinidad but did not get a re­sponse up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.