Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

The de­ci­sion to re­strict trav­ellers from Ger­many, Spain and France from en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go due to the out­break of COVID-19 (Coro­n­avirus) is like­ly to hurt tourism in To­ba­go.

Trav­ellers whose flights orig­i­nat­ed from Italy, South Ko­rea, Sin­ga­pore, Japan, Iran and Chi­na had al­ready been sub­ject to a 14-day wait af­ter leav­ing those coun­tries be­fore they are al­lowed to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go and on Tues­day Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced gov­ern­ment had added the three lat­est Eu­ro­pean na­tions.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency (TTA) Louis Lewis said the is­land was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the im­pact on vis­i­tors from Ger­many.

"Ger­many rep­re­sents 16 per­cent of our source mar­kets and there­fore it will have an im­pact." Lewis told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

TTA's CEO said he is to hold a con­fer­ence call with of­fi­cials from Con­dor Air­lines which has a week­ly flight to To­ba­go bring­ing on av­er­age 115 pas­sen­gers to the is­land.

The flight that orig­i­nates in the Deutsch­land city of Frank­furt is shared with Bar­ba­dos and is To­ba­go's on­ly di­rect flight out of main­land Eu­rope.

Lewis told Guardian Me­dia: "We do not know what this means for the flight since it is com­ing out of Ger­many. We will al­so have to talk to the peo­ple at the Air­port's Au­thor­i­ty to find out what the im­pli­ca­tions are. Re­mem­ber this an­nounce­ment was on­ly made last night so we are still try­ing to work out the im­pli­ca­tions."

He added that the flight al­so serves the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries that con­nect through Ger­many on their way to the sis­ter isle.

Lewis said so far To­ba­go's tourism has not been hurt but the COVID-19 out­break but the is­land was ex­pect­ing the falloff to come.

Be­fore the ad­vent of the out­break To­ba­go had seen a 20 per­cent up-tick in vis­i­tors in Jan­u­ary, year on year.