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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Caroni tour operators struggling to survive

We need a change in hours

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1151 days ago
20220118
Tour operator Navin Kalpoo works on his tour boat at the Caroni Bird Sanctuary Visitors’ Facility last weekend.

Tour operator Navin Kalpoo works on his tour boat at the Caroni Bird Sanctuary Visitors’ Facility last weekend.

ANISTO ALVES

An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­most nine months af­ter rivers were re­opened, al­low­ing Kalpoo’s Ibis Tours to re­sume op­er­a­tions for a re­strict­ed pe­ri­od, co-own­er Navin Kalpoo says ear­ly in­di­ca­tors have high­light­ed sev­er­al chal­lenges that could be detri­men­tal to their busi­ness.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said, “I had over 100 phone calls on Mon­day from per­sons who are ex­cit­ed but from the minute you tell them the change in hours, they are say­ing my kids are go­ing to be in on­line class­es or I am go­ing to be at work.”

He said as a re­sult of this, many per­sons are now on­ly se­cur­ing book­ings on the week­end.

Beach­es were re­opened on De­cem­ber 18, 2021, from 5 am to noon dai­ly; while rivers were re­opened from Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 17). In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment on the re­open­ing of rivers last Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 15), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­tend­ed the clos­ing time for beach­es and rivers to 2 pm.

Yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said they are now of­fer­ing two tours from 9 am to 11 am and noon to 2 pm.

Ad­mit­ting they had en­joyed more trac­tion be­fore from peo­ple who had opt­ed for the evening tour from 4 pm to 6 pm, he said, “This is usu­al­ly more re­lax­ing and af­ter work and school hours.”

Grate­ful for the re­spons­es they have re­ceived so far for book­ings, he said they in­tend to ap­proach the Min­istry of Tourism to re­quest an ex­emp­tion in terms of the op­er­at­ing hours based on the na­ture and type of busi­ness they op­er­ate.

He added, “Due to the fact of who we are and be­cause we do not con­trol na­ture, these are the na­tion­al birds and they are wild, we can’t pro­gramme them.

“They usu­al­ly come in the late hours, just be­fore it gets dark so if some ex­emp­tions can be made for us in light of this, we would be ex­treme­ly grate­ful.”

Ide­al­ly, Kalpoo said their pre­ferred hours would be from 4 pm to 6.30 pm dai­ly.

Ex­pect­ing a dras­tic re­duc­tion in book­ings dur­ing the week, he said this would fur­ther neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the busi­ness, which had al­ready been hit hard dur­ing the clo­sure of the past eight months due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Hav­ing bat­tled to en­sure they sat­is­fied their loan oblig­a­tions and met the as­so­ci­at­ed costs of keep­ing their five boats op­er­a­tional dur­ing the shut­down, Kalpoo said he was un­cer­tain of how much longer they can con­tin­ue in this man­ner.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia as he was clear­ing and cut­ting grass for a friend who was kind enough to hire him yes­ter­day, Kalpoo said he had been forced to find oth­er work to sup­port him­self and his fam­i­ly dur­ing the clo­sure.

If the re­quest to op­er­ate out­side of the des­ig­nat­ed hours is re­ject­ed by the min­istries of Tourism and Health, Kalpoo said they would have to con­tin­ue to seek oth­er av­enues of rev­enue to earn a liveli­hood.

“We have been do­ing so many things to sur­vive...I don’t even want to think along those lines,” Kalpoo said.

“It’s been very, very hard to main­tain the boats and keep­ing them afloat. We con­tin­ue to main­tain them and pay­ing the in­sur­ance and li­cens­es, and we have to run them every so of­ten to make sure the ma­rine en­gines are not af­fect­ed by build-up…we are still pay­ing loans for some of our en­gines and boats so it has been very tough for us.”

Not­ing that the cur­rent hours would not pro­vide the re­lax­ing, scenic tour sce­nar­ios cus­tomers are ac­cus­tomed to, as the sun is hottest at mid­day and di­rect­ly over­head, he con­tin­ued, “In the af­ter­noon, you are look­ing over­head to see the snakes, the birds…and you can’t look up at the sun.”

He ad­mit­ted there are some per­sons just want­i­ng to get out­side so they are com­ing for­ward, but on­line school­ing was the biggest chal­lenge now as par­ents said it was just not pos­si­ble to make book­ings due to clash­es.

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for a com­ment on whether he would con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the op­er­at­ing hours for tour op­er­a­tors were un­suc­cess­ful, as he was in the Sen­ate for the ma­jor­i­ty of the day yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, a tourism of­fi­cial said they may be open to dis­cus­sions.

“We un­der­stand the chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with the 2 pm cut-off time and we are very much open to mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion for an ex­ten­sion of the time.”

Point­ing out that the tourism min­istry op­er­ates with­in the pa­ra­me­ters set out by the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, the of­fi­cial added, “We made rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer for a restart of the tours in the first place, so there is a con­stant di­a­logue be­tween the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, the Min­istry of Health and the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary tour op­er­a­tors.”


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