Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate change ed­i­tor, Guardian Me­dia Ltd

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

Bird tourists can spend as much as US$850 a day on pack­ages in Trinidad and To­ba­go, sev­er­al times the ex­pen­di­ture cit­ed for a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor, putting the coun­try in a

po­ten­tial­ly lu­cra­tive po­si­tion as the glob­al bird tourism mar­ket ex­pands. But in­dus­try stake­hold­ers say cap­tur­ing that op­por­tu­ni­ty will re­quire pri­vate in­vest­ment,

col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gov­ern­ment, skilled guides and a tourism mod­el that en­sures more vis­i­tor dol­lars reach lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

T&T could lever­age its ex­tra­or­di­nary bio­di­ver­si­ty to cap­ture a larg­er share of a glob­al bird tourism mar­ket pro­ject­ed to reach US$95.2 bil­lion by 2030, with in­dus­try

stake­hold­ers ar­gu­ing that the niche of­fers the coun­try an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue greater vis­i­tor spend rather than sim­ply high­er vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

The eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of bird and na­ture tourism came in­to fo­cus at the 25th Bird­sCaribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, where the

sym­po­sium ex­am­ined how con­ser­va­tion could be con­vert­ed in­to sus­tain­able liveli­hoods and com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Un­der the con­fer­ence theme, ‘Birds, Peo­ple, Pros­per­i­ty: Har­ness­ing the Caribbean’s Nat­ur­al Ad­van­tage,’ the dis­cus­sion placed a busi­ness lens on an as­set this coun­try

al­ready pos­sess­es: its forests, wet­lands, wildlife and al­most 500 bird species.

Bird­sCaribbean ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Lisa Soren­son told del­e­gates that bird-fo­cused tourism is pro­ject­ed to grow from US$66.2 bil­lion in 2024 to US$95.2 bil­lion by 2030.

For T&T, how­ev­er, the more strik­ing fig­ure may be what in­di­vid­ual vis­i­tors are pre­pared to spend.

Soren­son said high-val­ue bird tourists spend be­tween US$500 and US$850 per day on T&T bird­ing pack­ages, com­pared with US$122 a day which she cit­ed for a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor.

“Sup­port­ing con­ser­va­tion isn’t just good for birds,” Soren­son said. “It cre­ates jobs, it sup­ports sus­tain­able liveli­hoods, and it at­tracts high val­ue, low im­pact vis­i­tors.”

She said bird tourists al­so tend to stay longer, trav­el year-round, ven­ture in­to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, hire lo­cal guides and sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es.

That presents an im­por­tant propo­si­tion for a tourism econ­o­my seek­ing greater val­ue from each ar­rival while spread­ing ex­pen­di­ture be­yond ho­tels and tra­di­tion­al tourism

cen­tres.

High yield, not just high vol­ume

Soren­son de­scribed T&T as the Caribbean’s stand­out leader in bird tourism and said the coun­try ranks sec­ond glob­al­ly for bird species rich­ness per square kilo­me­tre.

“This of course gives Trinidad and To­ba­go a dis­tinct nat­ur­al ad­van­tage, com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in avian tourism,” she said.

Cap­i­tal­is­ing on that ad­van­tage, how­ev­er, could re­quire a dif­fer­ent ap­proach from the Caribbean’s tra­di­tion­al pur­suit of mass-mar­ket tourism.

Through its Caribbean Bird­ing Trail, Bird­sCaribbean is ad­vo­cat­ing a low-vol­ume, low-im­pact, high-yield mod­el built around ecolodges, lo­cal restau­rants, spe­cial­ist guides,

cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty ex­pe­ri­ences.

“We’re not try­ing to at­tract a mil­lion more vis­i­tors,” Soren­son said. “We’re try­ing to at­tract vis­i­tors who cre­ate greater ben­e­fits with small­er im­pacts.”

The mod­el po­ten­tial­ly dis­trib­utes tourism ex­pen­di­ture across a broad­er do­mes­tic sup­ply chain. A bird­ing vis­i­tor does not on­ly pur­chase ac­com­mo­da­tion, but can gen­er­ate

in­come for guides, dri­vers, restau­rants, small guest­hous­es, ar­ti­sans, tour op­er­a­tors and com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing na­ture sites.

The Caribbean Bird­ing Trail is at­tempt­ing to build that ecosys­tem, even with an in­vest­ment gap in trails, sig­nage, ob­ser­va­tion fa­cil­i­ties, mar­ket­ing, and des­ti­na­tion pro­mo­tion. Bird­sCaribbean has trained 195 guides in eight coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to Soren­son, while more than 160 bird­ing sites in 25 coun­tries are list­ed through the ini­tia­tive.

Its on­line di­rec­to­ry al­so in­cludes more than 42 guides from 21 is­lands.

There are al­ready ex­am­ples of those skills be­ing con­vert­ed in­to busi­ness­es. Soren­son point­ed to a guide-train­ing grad­u­ate in Bonaire whose busi­ness had grown to the point

where ad­di­tion­al guides were need­ed.

“So the train­ings do work,” she said. “If you put in the work, if the guides put in the work, they do get the re­sults.”

Pri­vate in­vest­ment need­ed

For John Hadad, co-CEO of the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre, the pri­or­i­ty for T&T is clear.

“Pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, col­lab­o­ra­tion with gov­ern­ment, every­body buy­ing in­to this nar­ra­tive be­cause it is inar­guably a strong prod­uct,” Hadad said.

He sees the gov­ern­ment as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor, help­ing with aware­ness, pro­mo­tion and des­ti­na­tion po­si­tion­ing, while busi­ness­es in­vest in prod­ucts ca­pa­ble of at­tract­ing

spe­cial­ist trav­ellers.

“It’s a very niche mar­ket,” Hadad said. “And it’s a bur­geon­ing niche mar­ket be­cause it’s grow­ing at a rapid rate every year.”

He ar­gued that T&T should con­sid­er a mod­el built around high­er yield and a small­er foot­print, rather than al­low­ing fu­ture eco­tourism de­vel­op­ment to be­come a num­bers game.

Hadad said na­ture tourists gen­er­al­ly stay for nine or ten days and spend sig­nif­i­cant sums lo­cal­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence the coun­try’s nat­ur­al as­sets.

“The eco­nom­ic val­ue cre­ation is very high,” he said.

The chal­lenge, there­fore, is not sim­ply get­ting more tourists through the air­ports. It is de­ter­min­ing how much mon­ey each vis­i­tor leaves in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, where that

mon­ey is spent and how much reach­es com­mu­ni­ties.

On that score, Hadad be­lieves eco­tourism has a par­tic­u­lar ad­van­tage.

“Most of the im­pact is in the com­mu­ni­ties,” he said. “That’s what’s won­der­ful about eco­tourism, re­gen­er­a­tive tourism, is that it ex­ists in the com­mu­ni­ties.”

He iden­ti­fied hik­ers, hike lead­ers, tour guides, bird en­thu­si­asts, sci­en­tists and chefs among those who can ben­e­fit as com­mu­ni­ties de­vel­op prod­ucts around their nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al as­sets.

Hadad de­scribed it as “prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful form of tourism for com­mu­ni­ty in­clu­sion,” with the po­ten­tial to cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment while giv­ing com­mu­ni­ties op­por­tu­ni­ties to show­case their cul­ture.

Turn­ing con­ser­va­tion in­to in­come

The con­nec­tion be­tween liveli­hood and con­ser­va­tion was giv­en a hu­man face by José Al­ber­to Pérez of Wild En­demics in Cu­ba.

“Like ten years ago, I was a bird trap­per,” Pérez told at­ten­dees. “I’m not proud of it, but now I’m a tour guide.”

His tran­si­tion il­lus­trates an im­por­tant eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ple un­der­pin­ning the na­ture-tourism mod­el: com­mu­ni­ties are more like­ly to see wildlife and habi­tat as as­sets

worth pro­tect­ing when con­ser­va­tion can pro­duce le­git­i­mate in­come.

In coun­tries where em­ploy­ment and con­ser­va­tion fund­ing are lim­it­ed, guid­ing and re­lat­ed tourism busi­ness­es can pro­vide al­ter­na­tives while en­sur­ing that the eco­nom­ic

val­ue of wildlife re­mains with­in com­mu­ni­ties.

“De­spite all this, bird tourism has been the bridge of sol­i­dar­i­ty,” he said. But na­ture tourism al­so re­quires care­ful man­age­ment. Growth with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for the car­ry­ing ca­pac­i­ty of sen­si­tive sites risks dam­ag­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal prod­uct vis­i­tors have trav­elled to ex­pe­ri­ence.

For T&T, that makes pro­tect­ing nat­ur­al cap­i­tal a busi­ness con­sid­er­a­tion as much as a con­ser­va­tion one.

The coun­try does not need to man­u­fac­ture its bird­ing prod­uct from scratch. Its bio­di­ver­si­ty, es­tab­lished sites such as the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre, wet­lands and

in­ter­na­tion­al bird­ing rep­u­ta­tion al­ready pro­vide a foun­da­tion.

What is need­ed, speak­ers at the con­fer­ence ar­gued, is in­vest­ment around that nat­ur­al cap­i­tal: trained peo­ple, stronger pri­vate-sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion and poli­cies that pro­tect the habi­tats on which the in­dus­try de­pends.

“The Caribbean has a hid­den su­per­pow­er,” Soren­son said, “and this is one that is un­der­ap­pre­ci­at­ed and un­der­utilised.”

For T&T, turn­ing that su­per­pow­er in­to busi­ness will mean re­sist­ing the temp­ta­tion to mea­sure tourism suc­cess by ar­rivals alone.

Vis­i­tors who are pre­pared to spend US$500 to US$850 a day can gen­er­ate busi­ness for guides, restau­rants, trans­port providers, ecolodges and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties while cre­at­ing an eco­nom­ic in­cen­tive to keep forests and wet­lands in­tact, then birds be­come more than a con­ser­va­tion sto­ry.

They be­come part of the tourism econ­o­my and a po­ten­tial source of ex­port earn­ings from an as­set T&T al­ready owns.