Stake­hold­ers agree that 2021 has been a chal­leng­ing year for tourism in T&T as the sec­tor con­tin­ues to grap­ple with the rav­ages of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC) re­cent­ly re­port­ed that the Caribbean is re­cov­er­ing faster than any oth­er re­gion in the world, with tourism’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP ex­pect­ed to rise more than 47 per cent in 2021,

But UWI lec­tur­er and tourism ex­pert Ten­isha Brown-Williams not­ed this has not been the re­al­i­ty for T&T since tourism does not ap­pear to fea­ture as an eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ty com­pared to oth­er Caribbean is­lands.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted, there was like­ly an in­crease in ar­rivals in 2021 com­pared to 2020, a year where for the most part, in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al trav­el was halt­ed.

“In­deed, with the re­open­ing of the T&T bor­ders from Ju­ly 2021, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals would have in­creased but cer­tain­ly would not re­flect pre-pan­dem­ic ar­rival lev­els,” Brown-Williams ex­plained.

Fur­ther, she added, that the sec­tor in Trinidad con­tin­ues to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by un­set­tled in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments, which have re­sult­ed in lit­tle progress in prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to Brown-Williams the in­dus­try re­mains main­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed with the con­tin­ued ab­sence of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism Reg­u­la­to­ry Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty an­nounced since 2017.

Fur­ther, she said, while crime against tourists in T&T is low com­pared to oth­er Caribbean is­lands, this coun­try’s over­all crime rate neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­enced trav­eller per­cep­tions.

“Re­cent trav­el ad­vi­sories con­tin­ue to give po­ten­tial vis­i­tors rea­sons why they shouldn’t trav­el to T&T, and there is a void in our pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties to coun­ter­act these neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments strate­gi­cal­ly,” Brown-Williams said.

She not­ed that re­gion­al­ly, many des­ti­na­tions had adapt­ed well to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with new tourism of­fer­ings, but there were ex­ist­ing chal­lenges with the recon­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of Caribbean tourism, pri­mar­i­ly away from the tra­di­tion­al sun, sand, and sea tourism.

And de­spite the growth of the tourism shar­ing econ­o­my and in­creased de­mand in Airbnb book­ings with en­su­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, there is still a heavy fo­cus on en­clave tourism with min­imi­sa­tion of ro­bust eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, Brown-Williams added.

Mean­while, Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Has­sel Thom said the en­tire tourism val­ue chain had suf­fered through a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year that for many, saw the in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders closed to reg­u­lar com­mer­cial trav­el for 198 days.

With tourism be­ing an ex­port in­dus­try, he said, this coun­try was the last Caribbean des­ti­na­tion to re­open its in­ter­na­tion­al bor­der.

This, Thom added, was fu­elled by the cau­tious ap­proach tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment stem­ming from COVID-19 and with­in the pan­dem­ic be­ing “vac­cine in­equity” ex­pe­ri­enced by many de­vel­op­ing na­tions.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that some of the more recog­nised ho­tels part­nered with the Health Min­istry as a sur­vival strat­e­gy and in so do­ing chose to op­er­ate as State-su­per­vised quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties, cater­ing to re­turn­ing T&T cit­i­zens who were strand­ed abroad for an in­or­di­nate pe­ri­od of time that was in part com­pound­ed by Gov­ern­ment’s COVID con­tain­ment strat­e­gy of man­aged bor­der en­try.

“Ho­tels that did not sub­scribe to State-su­per­vised quar­an­tine type op­er­a­tion and chose to cater to the lo­cal mar­ket (stay­ca­tions) soon re­alised that this tar­get mar­ket was an non-vi­able op­tion and would have sub­se­quent­ly opt­ed to tem­porar­i­ly close to the pub­lic, as it was more cost­ly to re­main open and op­er­ate on sin­gle dig­it oc­cu­pan­cy cou­pled with low­er night­ly room rates,” Thom said. He added fur­ther, that dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2021 through “a Gov­ern­ment is­sued man­date de­signed to pro­tect its hy­dro­car­bon in­ter­est,” the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions were re­quired to have all per­son­nel un­der­go self-iso­la­tion and test­ing pri­or to ac­cess­ing off-shore plat­forms and drill rigs.

Ac­cord­ing to Thom, this man­date which took ef­fect from May 2021 pre­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for prop­er­ties that had the ca­pac­i­ty to cater to short to medi­um term oc­cu­pan­cy de­mand.

But he said tour op­er­a­tors, tour guides, des­ti­na­tion man­age­ment op­er­a­tors, tourist cen­tric taxis op­er­a­tors and the re­lat­ed tourism mem­ber­ship as­so­ci­a­tion were forced to col­lapse their op­er­a­tions, as Trinidad stake­hold­ers re­ceived no sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment, un­like coun­ter­parts in To­ba­go.

Fur­ther, he said, oth­er ob­sta­cles which the sec­tor faced dur­ing 2021 in­clud­ed no mora­to­ri­um on pay­ment of tax­es re­quired to be paid on every dol­lar of rev­enue gen­er­ate (VAT, Busi­ness Levy, Green Fund); no rate re­duc­tion on state dri­ven util­i­ties (elec­tric­i­ty/wa­ter) tem­po­rary or oth­er­wise; in­creased cost of op­er­at­ing (work­ing re­place­ment /con­sum­able); lim­it­ed to ze­ro in­ter­na­tion­al air­line car­ri­ers that trans­lates to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers; very re­cent neg­a­tive trav­el ad­vi­so­ry and high vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy stem­ming from poor pub­lic sec­tor dri­ven in­flu­enc­ing strate­gies to en­cour­age high­er vac­cine up­take.

Suc­cess de­spite ob­sta­cles

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Dr Acol­la Lewis Cameron of the UWI De­part­ment of Tourism, de­spite the many chal­lenges, the pe­ri­ods of lock down al­lowed des­ti­na­tion T&T to en­gage in sig­nif­i­cant tourism prod­uct en­hance­ment.

No­tably, she said, the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor, through the Gov­ern­ment’s Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Pro­gramme (TAUP) fo­cused on ma­jor up­grades to the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

Along­side the phys­i­cal up­grades, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency (TTAL) launched a des­ti­na­tion wide cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing pro­gramme which is fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the renowned Up­Ser­vice Com­pa­ny.

The aim is to tar­get 12,000 ser­vice cham­pi­ons across the tourism touch points eg cus­toms, im­mi­gra­tion, su­per­mar­kets, cafés etc.

Fur­ther, Lewis Cameron said, in keep­ing with the sus­tain­able tourism thrust for des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go, the Top Catch boat op­er­a­tor was the first boat op­er­a­tor in the Caribbean to be award­ed Blue Flag cer­ti­fied sta­tus in No­vem­ber.

This award, she de­scribed, was sig­nif­i­cant as it sent a sig­nal to trav­ellers that the is­land is a safe and clean des­ti­na­tion.

This Blue Flag sta­tus fol­lows the re­cent award of four Green Key cer­ti­fied prop­er­ties in­clud­ing Ba­nanaquit, Shep­herd’s Inn, Na­tive Abode and Ad­ven­ture Eco Vil­las.

Fur­ther, in To­ba­go alone, there are over 200 prop­er­ties that have ac­quired the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil Safe Trav­el lo­go, one of the high­est in the re­gion.

This, Lewis-Cameron added, gives the des­ti­na­tion lever­age as a safe trav­el des­ti­na­tion where many busi­ness­es are prac­tis­ing and com­ply­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards.

But Brown-Williams be­lieves that suc­cess is rel­a­tive to the stake­hold­er group.

For the Gov­ern­ment, she said, achieve­ments such as the re­turn of KLM air­lines and the an­nounce­ment of var­i­ous ho­tel con­struc­tion projects may be high­light­ed.

She al­so agreed with Lewis-Cameron that for civ­il so­ci­ety groups and tourism pro­fes­sion­als, es­pe­cial­ly in To­ba­go, the UN­ESCO Man and the Bios­phere Des­ig­na­tion for north-east To­ba­go and oth­er green­ing ini­tia­tives for the To­ba­go tourism sec­tor such as Blue Flag and Green Key have been vi­tal suc­cess­es.

How­ev­er, for some stake­hold­ers in the tourism val­ue chain on both is­lands, eg, ho­tels, tour guides, tour op­er­a­tors, suc­cess­es may not be eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied due to the con­tin­ued fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and over­all busi­ness de­cline, Brown-Williams not­ed.

For Thom how­ev­er, suc­cess for 2021, like 2020 can­not be mea­sured by an­nu­al oc­cu­pan­cy lev­el or prof­itabil­i­ty but sim­ply the abil­i­ty to per­se­vere and keep the doors open and to con­tin­ue play­ing the role of good cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to keep as much of its hu­man cap­i­tal as­set off the bread­line.

He not­ed that ho­tels in Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar re­sults of re­duced oc­cu­pan­cy by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent, adding that av­er­age dai­ly rate ranged from 40 per cent to 60 per cent and in­di­vid­ual earn­ing was be­tween 45 to 65 per cent (by virtue of few­er days worked).

“All of these are com­pared to 2019 mark­ers. For tour op­er­a­tors and tour guides busi­ness de­mand ac­tiv­i­ties ranged from ze­ro to sin­gle dig­it de­mand,” Thom added.

Mov­ing ahead

So how can T&T’s tourism sec­tor be strength­ened to make it eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able once again?

In­vest in new niche prod­ucts rec­om­mend­ed Lewis-Cameron.

She cit­ed a re­cent Book­ing.com re­port which point­ed to the rise of the con­scious trav­eller, some­one who is “far more dis­cern­ing” about the jour­neys they go on, are will­ing and able to be away from home for longer, more ap­pre­cia­tive of lo­cal peo­ple and are less reck­less in their spend­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis-Cameron these in­di­vid­u­als want more un­ortho­dox ex­pe­ri­ences that in­volves en­gage­ment with lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties in a safe and re­spect­ful man­ner; are dri­ven by a need to vol­un­teer and give back to a wor­thy cause and tru­ly de­sire the “off the beat­en path” ex­pe­ri­ences that en­hances their health and well­ness, and which pro­vides a greater con­nec­tion to peo­ple, the en­vi­ron­ment and life on a whole.

Fur­ther, she said vis­i­tors to the Caribbean are no longer ful­ly sat­is­fied with lay­ing on a beach with a Caribbean rum punch in their hands but in­stead want sim­ple but au­then­tic and unique ex­pe­ri­ences.

“The sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor de­pends heav­i­ly on the ex­tent to which the re­gion can re­spond ac­cu­rate­ly to the chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences and the new op­er­at­ing con­text by cre­at­ing in­no­v­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences,” Lewis Cameron added.

But ac­cord­ing to Brown-Williams progress will on­ly be re­alised through open and hon­est de­lib­er­a­tions with all stake­hold­ers and an eval­u­a­tion of the coun­try’s cur­rent po­si­tion re­lat­ed to tourism de­vel­op­ment as a mul­ti-tourism des­ti­na­tion.

“We need to ad­dress is­sues as they are and not as we want them to be. There were sig­nif­i­cant is­sues pre-COVID-19, and the pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed even wider gaps in the sec­tor.

“The re­al­i­ty is that the tourism sec­tor by na­ture is al­ready com­plex and frag­ment, which is fur­ther ex­ag­ger­at­ed if each stake­hold­er fails to un­der­stand and ful­fil their re­spec­tive roles,” Brown-Williams said.

As a coun­try, she not­ed, tourism as a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion tool from a pub­lic sec­tor per­spec­tive has been dis­cussed but pri­mar­i­ly “ lip ser­vice” has been paid since the fi­nan­cial in­vest­ments are sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than our Caribbean coun­ter­parts.

“The most im­por­tant cri­te­ri­on for suc­cess is the po­lit­i­cal will to make tourism a pri­or­i­ty for rev­enue earn­ing by any gov­ern­ment in pow­er. Out­side of this, we will con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence a trick­le of the vast eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits tourism can bring to the T&T econ­o­my,” Brown-Williams ad­vised.

And in shar­ing his strate­gies to en­hance the in­dus­try, Thom rec­om­mend­ed lever­ag­ing T&T’s sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture through col­lab­o­ra­tion with sport­ing bod­ies to host­ing high-ca­pac­i­ty sport­ing events.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that there ought to be in­creased and sus­tained in­vest­ment in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tion pro­mo­tion/pub­lic aware­ness pro­gramme in ex­ist­ing and new mar­kets as well as cre­at­ing new sites and at­trac­tion “sim­i­lar to the process of buy­ing orig­i­nal lo­cal art.”

Fur­ther, Thom said there should be the ex­pan­sion of the Tourism Up­grade Pro­gramme (TAUP) to in­clude manda­to­ry ‘Green’ el­e­ment as well as a full re­turn of a stan­dard mea­sure such as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism In­dus­try Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (TT­TiC) which ought to be made manda­to­ry.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Thom said there should be a na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry tourism leg­isla­tive pro­gramme fol­low­ing a mean­ing­ful com­pre­hen­sive con­sul­ta­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach with a set time-line for im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Thom al­so ad­vised there should be long-term bond in­vest­ment op­tions for pri­vate sec­tor in­vestor to re-en­er­gize as well as a more sup­port­ive bank­ing sec­tor for the in­dus­try or more­over one that speaks to an in­creased risk ap­petite.

But, he added, this has to be sup­port­ed through and by the Cen­tral Bank via pol­i­cy re­vi­sion that takes a medi­um to long term macro ap­proach in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.