GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Ho­tel can­cel­la­tions are af­fect­ing To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor as the is­land finds it­self on the front lines of a deep­en­ing re­gion­al cri­sis.

Fol­low­ing the dra­mat­ic US mil­i­tary ex­trac­tion of Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro on Jan­u­ary 3, 2026, in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers have been pulling out of book­ings, cit­ing fears of a “sec­ond wave” of in­sta­bil­i­ty in the South­ern Caribbean.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, con­firmed that the fall­out is hit­ting the is­land’s pre­mier ac­com­mo­da­tions hard.

“The ten­sion be­tween Venezuela and the US is re­al­ly af­fect­ing us and it def­i­nite­ly moved from our ho­tels, be­cause some of our ho­tels, the guests did can­cel and that would go in­to the cruise ship en­vi­ron­ment.

“We even had a con­fer­ence here some­time lat­er on this month and be­cause, in that con­fer­ence, I think one or two mem­bers of the team were US based, they de­cid­ed that it’s in their best in­ter­est they can­cel, be­cause the ten­sion is grow­ing. There is go­ing to be a sec­ond wave. We don’t know when the sec­ond wave is go­ing to be. And that ten­sion if you are re­al­ly com­ing in­to a re­gion where the un­cer­tain­ty is there. And you would def­i­nite­ly, def­i­nite­ly can­cel your plans,” Williams ex­plained.

The tim­ing could not be worse for To­ba­go, as the can­cel­la­tions co­in­cide with the peak win­ter sea­son and the lead-up to Car­ni­val.

Com­pound­ing the is­sue is a chron­ic pay­ment de­lay from state agen­cies like the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The To­ba­go busi­ness group­ing is al­so call­ing out the THA for its fail­ure to cre­ate a re­li­able fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem. Con­trac­tors re­port be­ing caught in a “cokey-eye” stare down with banks, who are in­creas­ing­ly hes­i­tant to lend against THA com­mit­ment let­ters be­cause pay­ments are fre­quent­ly de­layed by sev­en to eight months.

“You don’t al­ways get pay­ments on time and so the banks al­ways look at you with a cokey eye in the lo­cal par­lance. So it’s im­por­tant that when we get these com­mit­ments from the THA and we take it to the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion could say, okay, yes, this looks sol­id. So I can ad­vance you some mon­ey to start the project as the case may be and so forth. These kind of com­mit­ments and this en­abling en­vi­ron­ment is very dif­fi­cult,” Williams fur­ther ex­plained.

Lo­gis­tics al­so re­main a “to­tal dis­as­ter.”

With the cur­rent car­go ves­sel set to de­part on Jan­u­ary 12 and a re­place­ment not ex­pect­ed un­til lat­er this month, a crit­i­cal sup­ply gap looms.

Williams is urg­ing the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion to pri­ori­tise a seam­less air and sea bridge.

“We’re try­ing to find a cen­tre spot that we could re­al­ly make this thing work for us. So we’re ask­ing the THA, the new ad­min­is­tra­tion, pay a lit­tle bit of fo­cus on the lo­gis­tics in mov­ing peo­ple be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, whether it’s the sea bridge or the air bridge, be­cause tourism plays an im­por­tant part to us. And if we don’t, if folks don’t have con­fi­dence in com­ing across to the is­land, whether in­ter­na­tion­al or do­mes­tic, then they won’t come,” Williams added.