GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of To­ba­go’s tourism prod­uct can­not be ac­com­plished by emp­ty promis­es but on sound im­ple­men­ta­tion of strate­gies. This is es­pe­cial­ly so in a post­COVID world said tour op­er­a­tor and tourism ex­pert Ted Greig.

Greig, own­er of Ted’s Sun­shine Tours told the Busi­ness Guardian that To­ba­go’s tourism of­fer­ing “could have been and should have been” more ad­vanced than it is at present.

Hence, he said the is­land is still not on par with its re­gion­al part­ners, not­ing there’s still much to be im­proved on all fronts in To­ba­go.

And with the up­com­ing THA elec­tion he said whichev­er par­ty takes over there must be more col­lab­o­ra­tion with stake­hold­ers to move the in­dus­try for­ward.

“There must be a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor as it plays an in­te­gral role in tourism de­vel­op­ment in prod­uct and des­ti­na­tion. Those who are op­er­at­ing in sites and at­trac­tions need to be in­clud­ed be­cause they are the ones on the ground and they are the ones who per­haps know even more than those in of­fice,” Greig added.

Fur­ther, he said the time has “far gone” where peo­ple can “sit in an of­fice and think they know what is best” for To­ba­go with­out hav­ing that con­nec­tiv­i­ty with oth­er play­ers.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, while Greig wel­comed the pro­posed Mar­riott Ho­tel ini­tia­tive he hopes it does not turn in­to a “San­dals is­sue.”

“We need to en­sure this project comes to fruition and it does not be­come an­oth­er spin on things as we have seen in the past,” Greig added.

Lo­cal com­pa­ny, Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Lim­it­ed, had signed on to con­struct a $500 mil­lion 200-room Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel in Rocky Point, To­ba­go and it is ex­pect­ed to help put the is­land’s strug­gling tourism sec­tor on a path to growth.

Con­struc­tion is sched­uled to be­gin in 2023 on ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 acres of land on the west­ern side of Grafton Road and south of Pleas­ant Prospect.

In 2019 San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al how­ev­er, cit­ed “con­stant and on­go­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty” and with­drew its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the es­tab­lish­ment of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar re­sort on the is­land of To­ba­go.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, had said the con­struc­tion of the 750-room San­dals and Beach­es Re­sort rep­re­sent­ed a “ma­jor turn­ing point for the econ­o­my of To­ba­go.”

At the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go Vir­tu­al In­vest­ment Fo­rum , Louis Lewis, CEO of the To­ba­go Tourism Au­thor­i­ty said To­ba­go was in the mar­ket for prop­er­ty in­vest­ments of four-star and above with room ca­pac­i­ty of 250 and above.

How­ev­er, he em­pha­sized that in­vest­ments need­ed to have the “right mix” and be able to pro­duce a high-yield, low en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and ex­ist with the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment.

But Greig said oth­er fac­tors which must al­so be ex­am­ined to up­lift To­ba­go’s tourism in­clud­ing cus­tomer ser­vice which has been a “big chal­lenge” over the years.

But he said the De­part­ment of Tourism has paid some at­ten­tion to this by pro­vid­ing train­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

More prod­uct de­vel­op­ment

Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Has­sel Thom who spoke in his pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments not­ing that for To­ba­go to be on par with oth­er des­ti­na­tions much more than ob­vi­ous in­fra­struc­tur­al com­po­nents like the air­port project and ad­di­tion­al air­lift are need­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Thom To­ba­go must step-up its mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy as this plays a large role in the is­land’s vis­i­bil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, he said To­ba­go has def­i­nite­ly shown it can uti­lize the amount al­lo­cat­ed, adding that “the quan­tum of al­lo­ca­tion is more like­ly what needs to be looked at.”

Room­stock, he not­ed, has im­proved but this has been a lin­ger­ing is­sue for quite some time, as just pri­or to COVID the de­mand for the is­land would have stopped its con­sis­tent de­cline.

“Fund­ing arrange­ments will be re­quired how­ev­er, that in it­self may present chal­lenges for some of the prop­er­ties, as it al­so presents ad­di­tion­al debt,” Thom added.

And for in­creased vis­i­tor ar­rivals he sug­gest­ed the is­land fo­cus on how it blends its cul­tur­al el­e­ments in­to its tourism prod­uct.

“Cul­ture is al­ready en­twined with tourism and in­stead of bring­ing the cul­ture to the ho­tels, take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach of en­cour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to the re­spec­tive vil­lages where the ex­pe­ri­ence can be a bit more im­mer­sive and so do­ing, a greater ex­pe­ri­ence would be had by po­ten­tial vis­i­tors,” Greig ad­vised.

Fur­ther, Greig said the THA should en­cour­age a prop­er gov­er­nance arrange­ment, where all prop­er­ties are reg­is­tered busi­ness­es and pay tax­es.

“THA roles should on­ly be the en­abler so that the des­ti­na­tion be­comes more vis­i­ble,” Greig added.

But for the holis­tic hon­ing of To­ba­go’s tourism, Greig said what is re­quired is a sup­port­ive bank­ing sec­tor for fur­ther debt re­fi­nanc­ing, not­ing that for this to be im­ple­ment­ed will re­quire in­flu­ence from the Cen­tral Bank and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment.

“How can bond fi­nanc­ing be en­cour­aged if not with the tra­di­tion­al banks? We may al­so need to be­come a bit more cre­ative with fi­nanc­ing but with that comes ad­di­tion­al risk, such as look­ing at eq­ui­ty fund­ing through the en­gage­ment of peo­ple want­i­ng to in­vest. “The risk in this is that cap­i­tal struc­ture of own­er­ship will change, but it will present op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ex­ist­ing plants,” Greig said.

He added that for any of these fund­ing arrange­ments to be con­sid­ered then tourism has be deemed a spe­cial eco­nom­ic sec­tor that will re­quire a ma­ture ap­proach from all stake­hold­ers in­volved.

To­ba­go’s tourism still

Mean­while, Chris James, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion said tourism gen­er­al­ly, re­mains very re­silient-the re­cov­ery post 9/11 and the 2008 fi­nan­cial col­lapse en­abled tourism to came back big­ger and stronger.

But he said T&T has nev­er re­al­ly max­imised its true tourism po­ten­tial.

“You on­ly have to look at the des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion to see how tourism has grown, the jobs it has cre­at­ed and the on­go­ing in­vest­ment each is­land has achieved,” he added.

And in the case of To­ba­go James said the is­land has nev­er re­turned to the mid-2000’s when in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals reached over 87,000 com­pared to the 19,000 achieved in 2019.

He not­ed that air­lift has con­tin­ued to de­cline and non-stop flights are no longer, adding that the land li­cence process has put an end to in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment and mar­ket­ing is not con­sis­tent or sus­tained.

“As the world starts to re­turn to some nor­mal­i­ty trav­el and tourism is set to boom again. Al­ready in the re­gion some is­lands have more book­ings go­ing for­ward as of now com­pared to the same time in 2019. This is not the case in To­ba­go. We have BA re­turn­ing to To­ba­go on Jan­u­ary 10, but as of now no oth­er con­firmed in­ter­na­tion­al flights too To­ba­go.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of ho­tels will be open from De­cem­ber 1, but oc­cu­pan­cy will re­main low whilst beach­es re­main closed and un­til the air-bridge ser­vice in­creas­es flights,” James said.

Fur­ther, he said while To­ba­go does have the abil­i­ty to con­nect through the air­bridge with flights in­to Trinidad this can be prob­lem­at­ic as con­nec­tions are missed due to de­lays.

“And we re­al­ly need a trans­fer desk to speed To­ba­go’s bound pas­sen­gers through, mak­ing sure they make the con­nec­tion and ar­rive in To­ba­go as planned,” he added.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to James, To­ba­go has a lot to of­fer.

He ex­plained the is­land is very much in line with what tourists want now; eco green and a nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Say­ing that in­vest­ment is need­ed both lo­cal and for­eign to ex­pand and im­prove the prod­uct of­fer­ings and choice James added, “It is clear tourism in To­ba­go could be a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the na­tion­al cof­fers.”

Fur­ther, James said T&T has more to gain than oth­ers, be­cause of the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad hence To­ba­go can buy most of its tourism prod­ucts from Trinidad re­sult­ing in more of the tourism dol­lar re­tained in the coun­try.