In a post-pan­dem­ic era with more tourists want­i­ng unique “off the beat­en path of­fer­ings,” ex­pe­ri­en­tial tourism, there­fore, re­quires not a re­set­ting, but rather a reimag­in­ing of the en­tire tourism ex­pe­ri­ence, Ja­maican Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett is ad­vis­ing.

And while he ac­knowl­edged this mode is a threat to the tra­di­tion­al tourism mod­els like all in­clu­sives, it is, how­ev­er, an im­pe­tus to push the re­gion’s tourism prod­uct fur­ther.

Speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian on the side­lines of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed World Free Zones con­fer­ence, held at Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, Bartlett not­ed that all in­clu­sive ho­tels could now dis­cov­er that there’s need for new eco­nom­ic and busi­ness mea­sures and even in­no­v­a­tive ways of pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“The tra­di­tion­al feel­ing of go­ing to a large ho­tel is dis­ap­pear­ing fast as peo­ple are go­ing to small­er and more ex­clu­sive en­gage­ments,” he ex­plained.

Bartlett pre­dict­ed the Airbnb sec­tor will be a stronger play­er in the glob­al ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor.

The ef­fect of this he added, is al­so sig­nif­i­cant as it means that more peo­ple can now en­joy ex­pe­ri­ences which will there­fore, al­so help build the in­dus­try in sev­er­al ways, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial­ly.

“So what we are go­ing to see is there will be a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of own­er­ship with­in the tourism space.

“That may not be a ter­ri­ble thing as it may en­able more or­di­nary cit­i­zens in­to the tourism val­ue chain,” Bartlett added.

And T&T’s Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell al­so shared sim­i­lar views to Bartlett that the tra­di­tion­al mod­el of tourism should not be threat­ened by ex­pe­ri­en­tial tourism as they both strive to ac­com­plish the same goal—to en­sure a mem­o­rable vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ence. Hence, he said both must find a way to op­er­ate in cog­ni­sance.

And as far as T&T goes, the min­is­ter said this coun­try, by its very de­f­i­n­i­tion is large­ly “ex­pe­ri­en­tial” so it al­ready presents an ex­treme­ly unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to tap in­to that type of tourism.

“Be­cause of what we have to of­fer in terms of com­mu­ni­ty tourism; small scale co­coa and choco­late pro­duc­tion, in­dige­nous mu­sic and dance and culi­nary tourism ex­pe­ri­ences, Trinidad and To­ba­go is now more at­trac­tive,” Mitchell told BG.

He added, “In ad­di­tion, a num­ber of their guests are no longer drawn to the typ­i­cal sun, sea and sand va­ca­tions be­cause they have be­come mun­dane and passé.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said as tourism re­turns to nor­mal and whilst there’s a pent up de­mand for trav­el, vis­i­tors are look­ing for those in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ences that will help them cre­ate a con­nec­tion they lost for the last two years dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

T&T al­ready has this ad­van­tage he ar­gued.

“Be­cause of our cul­ture, her­itage and his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions we are well placed to pro­vide vis­i­tors with tai­lor made ex­pe­ri­ences,” Mitchell re­it­er­at­ed, adding that this coun­try has been pro­mot­ing this as­pect of tourism for quite some time with its many tours show­cas­ing dif­fer­ent as­pects of T&T in­clud­ing culi­nary, her­itage and na­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, these sen­ti­ments were al­so echoed dur­ing the re­cent Flori­da Caribbean Cruise As­so­ci­a­tion Sum­mit at­tend­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism, Tourism Trinidad Ltd and cruise ex­ec­u­tives. But how can lo­cal larg­er ho­tels in­te­grate ex­pe­ri­en­tial tourism in­to their prod­uct?

Mitchell rec­om­mend­ed that guests can have ac­cess to lo­cal­ly made items at re­tail shops in the ho­tels, pro­ceeds of which are then rein­vest­ed in­to lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty groups.

“This gives trav­ellers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take home a piece of the re­gion and sup­ports lo­cal ar­ti­sans,” he said.

Al­so, the tourism min­is­ter said there should be en­gage­ment with lo­cal tour guides in­to craft­ing per­son­alised or dis­count­ed tours which can be sold di­rect­ly at ho­tels. Mitchell de­tailed that there are op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly.

“Our econ­o­my would ex­pe­ri­ence a much need­ed boost with the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect when tourists spend on unique, im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ences.

“There is al­so the ad­van­tage of the in­come stay­ing and cir­cu­lat­ing with­in our lo­cal econ­o­my,” Mitchell ex­plained.

Fur­ther, he not­ed that ex­pe­ri­en­tial tourism al­so rais­es aware­ness of lo­cal ex­pe­ri­ences and ex­pos­es vis­i­tors to a side of T&T that they are not read­i­ly ex­posed to.

This type of tourism al­so pro­vides jobs for lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and widens the stake­hold­er base be­cause the non-tra­di­tion­al stake­hold­ers now be­gin to ben­e­fit from those tourism re­ceipts, Mitchell said.

“Com­mu­ni­ties such as Paramin, Moru­ga and To­co have wel­comed vis­i­tors to their homes and lives and ex­posed them to their cus­toms and her­itage. “This is why the min­istry, through its State agency, has in­vest­ed in train­ing and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ini­tia­tives for these stake­hold­ers to en­sure im­proved ser­vice de­liv­ery and a more re­fined but still rus­tic tourism prod­uct,” Mitchell added.

He fur­ther not­ed that be­cause ex­pe­ri­en­tial trav­el ties in­to the con­cept of be­spoke ex­pe­ri­ences the Airbnb in­dus­try is al­so a part of this in­ti­ma­cy as it too pro­vides that per­son­al need for es­cape.

But giv­en its pop­u­lar­i­ty and at­trac­tive­ness with low­er rates, is Airbnb a threat to tra­di­tion­al ho­tels?

Not­ing that the tourism in­dus­try is very seg­ment­ed, Mitchell said be­cause of this, there are dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of the tourism prod­uct which will ap­peal to var­i­ous tourists.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that what Airbnb has done is cater to a dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ic and of­fers a more per­son­al­ized and cus­tomized ex­pe­ri­ence. “As a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic, vis­i­tors are more de­sirous of a more in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence due to the per­cep­tion that such prop­er­ties may be safer be­cause of less po­ten­tial of in­ter­act­ing with COVID-19,” Mitchell al­so not­ed.

He said even though ho­tels may ex­pe­ri­ence re­duced book­ings, low­er oc­cu­pan­cy and re­duced rev­enues be­cause of in­creased des­ti­na­tion room stock and com­pet­i­tive room rates of­fered by Airbnb prop­er­ties, the over­all im­pact is min­i­mal as the vol­ume of vis­i­tors di­vert­ed from tra­di­tion­al ho­tels with vo­lu­mi­nous room stock may not be sig­nif­i­cant.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mitchell said Airbnb serves a very spe­cif­ic niche rather than com­pet­ing with large brand­ed ho­tels.

For ex­am­ple, he ref­er­enced that with­in the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca trav­ellers, in par­tic­u­lar those from the US, opt for longer stays while out­per­form­ing the tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor and even re­cov­er­ing faster in 2021 than tra­di­tion­al ho­tels.

On whether Gov­ern­ment should reg­u­late the Airbnb sec­tor, Mitchell ad­vised that the new rev­enue au­thor­i­ty should have sys­tems in place to en­sure own­ers re­mit their fair share of in­come and or cor­po­ra­tion tax where ap­plic­a­ble, as well as prop­er­ty tax.

“This, of course it not to gain an un­fair ad­van­tage over the more tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties whose room prices are im­pact­ed by the col­lec­tion of ho­tel room tax,” the min­is­ter em­pha­sised.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mitchell said there are con­cerns that the qual­i­ty at some prop­er­ties are not in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Lisa Shandilya Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of bou­tique prop­er­ty, The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel lo­cat­ed in St Ann’s al­so not­ed that Airbnb has mar­ket­ed ex­ten­sive­ly over the years to be one of the for­mi­da­ble B2B plat­forms in the world.

Not­ing that the dy­nam­ics of this plat­form has changed, Shandilya ex­plained this has aligned it­self to oth­er ma­jor on­line trav­el agency plat­forms, such as Book­ing or Ex­pe­dia.

“Like­wise oth­er Apps have been de­vel­oped over the past few years with­in des­ti­na­tions or re­gions. Airbnb and oth­er shared prop­er­ty Apps tend to trig­ger low­er rate of­fered to con­sumers as op­posed to the more con­ven­tion­al plat­forms.Con­sumers seek­ing bud­get prop­er­ties , or apart­ments will go to these sites,” Shandilya said.

Hence, she added that all plat­forms which of­fer in­ven­to­ry for com­mis­sion, has threat­ened both trav­el agen­cies- which are al­most ex­tinct- and Gov­ern­ment’s tax col­lec­tion.

Shandilya al­so agreed that Airbnb and oth­er shared plat­forms should be reg­u­lat­ed, re­it­er­at­ing that they need to pay tax­es and in­sur­ance for the safe­ty of cus­tomers.