This Christ­mas Sea­son has been de­scribed as un­pre­dictable by own­ers of guest hous­es, vil­las and ho­tels in To­ba­go. This is be­cause con­trary to what was ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed, oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els are said to be low com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

This was con­firmed by To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Chris James yes­ter­day.

“Ho­tels are 22 per cent for De­cem­ber, guest hous­es are 21 per cent, vil­las and self-cater­ing are 30 per cent and just to clar­i­fy that there is a pe­ri­od from Box­ing Day for five days where vil­las and self-care go up to 74 per cent,” he said yes­ter­day.

James said it was dif­fi­cult to project fig­ures for Jan­u­ary, since guests were opt­ing to book clos­er to their ar­rival to avoid any mishaps

“I can’t give you Jan­u­ary fig­ures be­cause what’s hap­pen­ing, peo­ple are book­ing very late... they are ba­si­cal­ly book­ing to­day for to­mor­row,” he said.

James said com­pared to years pri­or to the pres­ence of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, De­cem­ber hol­i­days were the busiest. In fact, he said the last two weeks of De­cem­ber and the first weeks of Jan­u­ary are the busiest months

“With the bor­ders closed we don’t have the in­ter­na­tion­al guests and so these fig­ures are good, they are bet­ter than we have had be­cause we have been emp­ty all these months. So this bet­ter than we have had re­cent­ly but it’s not great, but we are glad and grate­ful for the busi­ness.”

He al­so said tourism stake­hold­ers are said to have been prop­er­ly trained to man­age the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic at their es­tab­lish­ments. James said many train­ing ses­sions were held with the Caribbean Tourism and Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion, as well as CARPHA.

One such fa­cil­i­ty is the Mt Irvine Bay Ho­tel, where man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jacque­line Yorke-West­cott said have ex­ten­sive COVID-19 pro­to­cols that go be­yond the wear­ing of masks and sani­tis­ing. She said staff have been trained to man­age any sit­u­a­tion. She boast­ed that all staff use gloves and PPE, there is reg­u­lar sani­ti­sa­tion of coun­ters and ta­bles us­ing UV light, while the ho­tel is mov­ing to­wards con­tact­less trans­ac­tions.