Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A flight sim­u­la­tion will be held be­fore the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal is of­fi­cial­ly opened.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day while cel­e­brat­ing Nat­ur­al Trea­sures Day in Char­lot­teville. The event at­tract­ed scores of peo­ple who came to wit­ness the var­i­ous cus­toms of the scenic fish­ing vil­lage.

Au­gus­tine re­vealed the sim­u­la­tion will be held to gauge the op­er­a­tional readi­ness of the ter­mi­nal. It will be con­duct­ed along­side the com­mis­sion­ing of the ter­mi­nal, with a date for both events ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced as ear­ly as to­day.

He said, “An an­nounce­ment will come out this week. Per­haps by to­mor­row you will have an an­nounce­ment for the com­mis­sion­ing. There will be a com­mis­sion­ing and a flight sim­u­la­tion. Once that is done, the Min­istry of Civ­il Avi­a­tion will make a pub­lic an­nounce­ment for the ac­tu­al of­fi­cial use of the air­port.”

Au­gus­tine said the sim­u­la­tion may take place “with­in the week or by next week­end.”

Work has been mov­ing apace to­wards the full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the air­port. Sec­re­tary of Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture Nathisha Charles-Pan­tin told Guardian Me­dia that 90 per cent of the fenc­ing for the air­port car park has been com­plet­ed. Mean­while, road mark­ing of the air­port sur­round­ings be­gan last week and oth­er works con­tin­ue.

Dur­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) bud­get de­bate for fis­cal 2027, it was re­vealed that the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance has al­lo­cat­ed $10 mil­lion for the build­out of the air­port ter­mi­nal.

The ter­mi­nal is ex­pect­ed to be a game-chang­er for tourism on the is­land, with a ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date three mil­lion pas­sen­gers an­nu­al­ly.

Au­gus­tine said that, once com­plet­ed, the fa­cil­i­ty will stand out re­gion­al­ly and bring pride to To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“We have teams work­ing round the clock, 24-7, try­ing to get it ready.

“We are go­ing to have some things in the new ter­mi­nal that ac­tu­al­ly don’t ex­ist by com­par­i­son in oth­er ter­mi­nals in the Caribbean, and that is be­cause we want this ter­mi­nal to be a flag­ship with­in our tourism prod­uct on the is­land.”

Au­gus­tine was ex­pect­ed to con­duct an­oth­er site vis­it at the ter­mi­nal af­ter leav­ing Char­lot­teville. Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our has toured the fa­cil­i­ty sev­er­al times in re­cent weeks as the open­ing draws clos­er.

Turn­ing to To­ba­go’s wider tourism strat­e­gy, Au­gus­tine said the THA is fo­cus­ing on com­mu­ni­ty events such as Nat­ur­al Trea­sures Day, which he be­lieves will set the is­land apart.

“Our da­ta shows com­mu­ni­ty tourism works for small is­lands like To­ba­go. When we look at the num­bers, ar­eas where tourists con­cen­trate on the is­land, Cas­tara is on top of every­one else. Cas­tara does not have a sin­gle large en­ter­prise. It is just re­al­ly com­mu­ni­ty-based tourism.”

He said this type of tourism en­sures a greater dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, with tourist spend­ing fil­ter­ing in­to more pock­ets.

“There is po­ten­tial in our cre­ative in­dus­try, in the or­ange econ­o­my, and us­ing that as a fil­lip to dri­ve our tourism prod­uct.”

Asked about Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett’s com­plaint of an in­ad­e­quate bud­get to mar­ket the is­land, Au­gus­tine agreed that the al­lo­ca­tion need­ed to be beefed up.

“When you com­pare To­ba­go to Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da and oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, they out­spend us ten to one. They might be spend­ing US$14 mil­lion on mar­ket­ing, which is more than our en­tire bud­get for ad­min­is­tra­tive costs, mar­ket­ing, air­line en­gage­ment, etc. If T&T is se­ri­ous about tourism, we have to in­vest more so we can be com­pet­i­tive.”