Hote­liers in To­ba­go say they fear that all may be lost as the do­mes­tic tourism mar­ket has dried up since Trinida­di­ans are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty ac­cess­ing the is­land and the in­ter­na­tion­al tourists are not com­ing al­though the bor­ders are open.

Own­ers said yes­ter­day they’ve ex­haust­ed their sav­ings and liq­ui­dat­ed as­sets how­ev­er their re­cent­ly up­grad­ed ho­tel rooms are still emp­ty and they need so­lu­tions.

Sto­ries of mount­ing debt and fi­nan­cial loss in To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor have been a re­oc­cur­ring theme since the on­set of the Pan­dem­ic last year but Hote­liers in To­ba­go re­vealed things have got­ten worst this year. Guardian Me­dia reached out to Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Chris James for a re­view of the is­land’s ar­rivals for the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, he said oc­cu­pan­cy is at an all-time low.

“With on­ly 3 flights a day from CAL (Caribbean Air­lines) and the fer­ries at half ca­pac­i­ty, To­ba­go just does not have enough vis­i­tors to make it eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able to open - it’s not just ho­tels, restau­rants, tours and ac­tiv­i­ties as well, it costs more to open than they can make.”

Michael Roberts of Mike’s Re­sort at Crown Point said 2021 has turned out to be the “worst ever” in his fif­teen years of op­er­a­tions.

“Last year was bad but we still had a few guests here and there from the do­mes­tic mar­ket com­ing over to re­lax in a dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment but even that has dis­ap­peared. The few guests we had are say­ing that they can’t get flights be­cause not every­one likes the boat.”

Roberts said the is­land miss­es the sea­son­al busi­ness as typ­i­cal­ly seen dur­ing Christ­mas and East­er. He said the three dai­ly flights avail­able on air bridge are re­served for es­sen­tial trav­el and leaves no room for the do­mes­tic leisure trav­el mar­ket to thrive.

Robert said stay­ing afloat is im­pos­si­ble.

“I have not had any guests for the last four months, but I have to still pay util­i­ty bills, you are look­ing at $12,000 for elec­tric­i­ty $3,000 month­ly for wa­ter and in­ter­net is an­oth­er bill we have to find a way to fi­nance.”

He said his util­i­ties were dis­con­nect­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. Roberts said he ac­cessed the gov­ern­ment’s prop­er­ty up­grade grant but the “rooms are up­grad­ed and emp­ty.”

He said as dif­fi­cult as things are, he still has to find ways to as­sist the less for­tu­nate in his com­mu­ni­ty be­cause he is of­ten ap­proached by sin­gle moth­ers and fam­i­lies in need of as­sis­tance with ba­sic items such as food.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er at the Tropik­ist Ho­tel Safiya Ho­sein said the sit­u­a­tion is bleak.

“Oc­cu­pan­cy is low and cus­tomers are mak­ing book­ings but then the book­ings get can­celled be­cause per­sons do not have con­firmed flights. Most of our guests want to run away for maybe two or three days but they don’t want to risk be­ing strand­ed at the air­port.”

Ho­sein who has been with Tropik­ist since 2007, said she un­der­stands the need for the trav­el re­stric­tions but there must be a bal­ance.

“Yes we have peo­ple los­ing their lives and that’s a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion but there are al­so per­sons los­ing their liveli­hoods. We can’t af­ford to pay all of our staff so we are op­er­at­ing on skele­tal staff, we are in a pan­dem­ic but once the prop­er safe­ty mea­sures are im­ple­ment­ed with pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and sen­si­ti­za­tion on vac­ci­na­tion we can sur­vive and go on to thrive.”

She said the gov­ern­ment should al­low lo­cal trav­el.

But re­spond­ing to con­cerns about the be­lea­guered do­mes­tic tourism mar­ket, Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis said “we are in a pan­dem­ic with ris­ing cas­es and re­strict­ed in­ter-is­land trav­el.” Stat­ing that rooms will “not die, but peo­ple will con­tin­ue to die if we don’t act re­spon­si­bly”, the Chief Sec­re­tary said hote­liers should vac­ci­nate and en­cour­age oth­ers to be vac­ci­nat­ed as he does not see the is­land re­turn­ing to any sem­blance of nor­mal­cy any oth­er way.