PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Tourists are stay­ing longer in T&T.

But they aren’t stay­ing in tra­di­tion­al ho­tels.

For much of this year, many on so­cial me­dia would have come across trav­el blogs fea­tur­ing vis­i­tors to T&T.

Most re­cent­ly, many would have seen blog­ger Ch­e­lo Abbe post videos hail­ing how safe he felt spend­ing time in T&T and how much val­ue he felt he got for US$50 and US$20 in Port of Spain.

How­ev­er Abbe, like many oth­er blog­gers this year didn’t stay in a ho­tel, but in­stead was host­ed at an Airbnb.

This is a trend that had been recog­nised by the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hay­den New­ton.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Wednes­day, New­ton con­firmed that vis­i­tor num­bers to the coun­try were in­deed back to the pre-pan­dem­ic num­bers.

“What I like to say is that the re­cov­ery has been ro­bust. We at the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty would have done some plan­ning, some sce­nario fore­cast­ing post-COVID, and we have ex­ceed­ed that sig­nif­i­cant­ly. In 2023 for in­stance, we achieved growth in terms of the pas­sen­ger num­bers that were, in fact, far ex­ceed­ing what we fore­cast. In 2024, it con­tin­ues. We are back to the pre-COVID num­bers, and we con­tin­ue to do the work to­geth­er with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port in terms of en­sur­ing that we are able to in­flu­ence pas­sen­gers from var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions to come to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said New­ton at the Min­istry’s of­fice in Port of Spain.

Ear­li­er this year, Mas­ter­card re­leased a ‘Trav­el Trends 2024’ re­port which not­ed that glob­al­ly the trav­el sec­tor had seen “soar­ing pas­sen­ger traf­fic and longer stays in 2024.”

When con­tact­ed about that re­port in May, the Min­istry of Tourism could not con­firm the da­ta.

How­ev­er, New­ton was able to con­firm that vis­i­tors to this coun­try were in­deed stay­ing longer, but more vis­i­tors were turn­ing to Airbnb in­stead of ho­tels.

“We are see­ing sim­i­lar trends. And I could give you per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences in terms of that. Let me give you an ex­am­ple. My son, that younger gen­er­a­tion, they trav­el, they go to the Airbnb’s, which are basedin the coun­tries, and they stay longer. It’s the same thing we are see­ing in Trinidad,” said New­ton, who not­ed that young trav­ellers in par­tic­u­lar were com­ing to this coun­try to ex­pe­ri­ence it.

“We are such a best-kept se­cret. Maybe it’s the fact that we have a grow­ing Airbnb mar­ket where some of the young peo­ple from var­i­ous coun­tries in­ter­na­tion­al­ly are com­ing and stay­ing for 10 to 15, days in To­ba­go and in Trinidad. They are not nec­es­sar­i­ly us­ing the for­mal ho­tels, but they’re us­ing those fa­cil­i­ties (Airbnbs) and they’re, they’re say­ing here. So that is the mar­ket that is grow­ing,” said New­ton, who ad­mit­ted the onus was now on trav­el stake­hold­ers to build on this to push tourism in the coun­try fur­ther.

“My mar­ket­ing, busi­ness mar­ket and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er would have done some work with re­spect to this area, and she recog­nis­es that that is one of the groups that we have to spend some time and ef­fort in terms of en­cour­ag­ing them,” said New­ton.

Culi­nary tourism

Rafael Echevarne, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of Air­ports Coun­cil In­ter­na­tion­al - Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ACILAC) feels this coun­try still has much un­tapped po­ten­tial in that re­gard. He said T&T’s culi­nary tourism sec­tor was un­der­served.

“This is a change in mar­ket (we no­ticed), and def­i­nite­ly things like Airbnb are be­com­ing very, very im­por­tant. It’s some­thing that you have to fac­tor in. And al­so the ex­clu­siv­i­ty of des­ti­na­tions, it’s al­so be­com­ing some­thing very im­por­tant. You know, re­treats in the mid­dle of nowhere, are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant. And I think that, again, Trinidad has a huge po­ten­tial there, for ex­am­ple, in food trav­el. The des­ti­na­tions for peo­ple to ex­pe­ri­ence foods. I mean, Trinidad ob­vi­ous­ly stands out, not on­ly in the re­gion, but world­wide,” said Echevarne, when asked about the trend.

He con­tin­ued, “Re­cent­ly, I was lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast. And I think it was one, An­tho­ny Bour­dain, who passed away some years ago. He men­tioned that Trinidad is the place. If you have to vis­it, (Trinidad is) the place in the world. That has a huge in­flu­ence on those peo­ple want­i­ng to trav­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. And so you have to make the most out of it. And so yes, there is def­i­nite­ly a chang­ing trend. Peo­ple trav­el­ling more, want­i­ng ex­pe­ri­ences. It’s not so much go­ing for a week in a re­sort.”

Echevarne said how­ev­er this need­ed to be prop­er­ly cul­ti­vat­ed, adding, “Ex­pe­ri­ences is the thing. And of course, it doesn’t hap­pen by it­self. You ac­tu­al­ly have to re­al­ly work to­geth­er with the tourism in­dus­try, with the air­lines, with all those things that I men­tioned be­fore, en­sur­ing that en­ter­ing the coun­try is a plea­sur­able ex­pe­ri­ence. All those things con­tribute to po­si­tion­ing these des­ti­na­tions.”

In Sep­tem­ber, while ad­dress­ing HRMATT C-Suite Con­ver­sa­tions, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Arts and Cul­ture Ran­dall Mitchell ac­knowl­edged new Airbnbs were cre­at­ing a new dy­nam­ic in the tourism mar­ket by cre­at­ing new op­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences for lo­cals and vis­i­tors alike.

In his speech at the event, he hailed the Paramin Sky and Big­foot’s Dome in Gran Cou­va as two such lo­cal stays that were at­tract­ing sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion.

Ear­li­et this year, the op­er­a­tors of Paramin Sky shared that a trav­eller who, ac­ci­den­tal­ly clicked on Port-of-Spain in­stead of Por­tu­gal, opt­ed to choose a va­ca­tion at the Paramin Airbnb in­stead af­ter see­ing the views of­fered.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said his Min­istry was do­ing what it could to push tourism and gen­er­ate more for­eign ex­change by se­cur­ing more flights to the coun­try.

In that re­gard, he said that at least 15 Air ser­vices agree­ments were to be fi­nalised to do just that, while he was look­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of the Pi­ar­co Aeropark and the com­ple­tion of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port as fur­ther buffers for the sec­tor.

“Our vi­sion is for Trinidad to be that hub for air trans­porta­tion in the re­gion. Once you es­tab­lish a hub, you need more air­lift,” said Sinanan who again stressed his in­ten­tion to make T&T a trans­port hub for the re­gion.

“It is eas­i­er to trav­el to Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca than to trav­el around the Caribbean. So we are hap­py that LI­AT would have start­ed back, or will be start­ing, is it next week or some­time? here in Trinidad. And we have Air Cana­da com­ing back on stream. We have sev­er­al new air­lines com­ing on stream, and our na­tion­al car­ri­er, they are al­so ex­pand­ing their routes.” said Sinanan, who hailed Caribbean Air­lines’ launch of routes to Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe re­cent­ly.