The Min­istry of Tourism and Cul­ture, through its agen­cies, Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL) and To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL), has be­gun the roll­out of the COVID-19 pro­to­cols for this coun­try’s tourism sec­tor 2021.

In a state­ment, the min­istry said over 200 es­tab­lish­ments in To­ba­go were is­sued with the Safe Trav­els Stamp from the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC) while TTL trained and is­sued cer­tifi­cates to over 450 op­er­a­tors on achiev­ing COVID-19 com­pli­ance and readi­ness.

TTL al­so part­nered with the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) to train and pro­mote the Caribbean Trav­ellers Health As­sur­ance Stamp and the Caribbean Trav­ellers Health App.

TTL, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with TTAL and the Min­istry of Health, will train over 700 tourism stake­hold­ers from T&T, in­clud­ing tour guides, tour op­er­a­tors and tourist trans­porta­tion providers.

The train­ing, which will be­gin on Ju­ly 16, 2021 and will last un­til Au­gust, will be con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Min­istry of Health-ap­proved COVID-19 pro­to­cols for the sec­tor.

It will be fol­lowed by a rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion process to en­sure strict ad­her­ence to the pro­to­cols, the min­istry added.

And as part of its wider en­gage­ment plan, the min­istry along with TTL and TTAL, will meet with the res­i­dents of all the ma­jor tourism or­gan­i­sa­tions ahead of the re­open­ing of the coun­try’s bor­ders on Ju­ly 17, 2021

The min­istry al­so said it is work­ing with the Health Min­istry to vac­ci­nate tourism stake­hold­ers.

The COVID-19 pro­to­cols for sec­tor are recog­nised, test­ed guide­lines to di­rect the sec­tor’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions, pro­tect the health of tourism sec­tor em­ploy­ees, guests, and the com­mu­ni­ty and in­stil con­fi­dence in the mind of trav­ellers that sys­tems are in place at the des­ti­na­tion to pro­tect them.

They will as­sist tourism op­er­a­tors with achiev­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Safe Trav­els Stamp from the WTTC.

“These pro­to­cols, with their sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed guide­lines, can now be used by tourism ser­vice providers across the eight tourism sec­tors. They al­low the sec­tor to op­er­ate safe­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, pro­tect­ing our op­er­a­tors and vis­i­tors from COVID-19,” Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said.

The min­istry added that ad­her­ence to the pro­to­cols will safe­guard both vis­i­tors and tourism op­er­a­tors.

They will al­so iden­ti­fy clear re­quire­ments, pro­ce­dures, com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, strate­gies etc. that will re­duce the risk of trans­mis­sion of the COVID-19 virus if fol­lowed.

Ran­dom spot checks will be con­duct­ed on op­er­a­tions is­sued with the Safe Trav­els Stamp.

The min­istry said that a tourism op­er­a­tor does not com­ply with the re­quire­ments of the pro­to­cols, then the stamp will be with­drawn.

“All tourism stake­hold­ers must adapt to an en­vi­ron­ment where both vis­i­tor and per­son­al safe­ty is para­mount. The re­open­ing of T&T’s bor­ders rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the tourism re­cov­ery process. For this rea­son, the min­istry is en­sur­ing that tourism stake­hold­ers are well equipped to wel­come our long-await­ed guests safe­ly,” Mitchell said.

He added that the suc­cess­ful restart of the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try de­pends on vac­ci­na­tions on the one hand, and the con­fi­dence of trav­ellers in the pre­pared­ness of des­ti­na­tions to pro­tect against the virus.