It is now more than six years since the con­tro­ver­sial ac­qui­si­tion of the Sanc­tu­ary Vil­la at Black Rock and Man­ta Lodge, a Dive Ho­tel at Spey­side, by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and now comes word that there is still no plan for Sanc­tu­ary Vil­las and Man­ta Lodge has not been re­paired.

Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis con­firmed that while work had be­gun at Man­ta Lodge he is now ex­pect­ing it to re­ceive guests at the end of the year.

“Man­ta Lodge is on­go­ing. Of course we start­ed the ren­o­va­tions to that. I ex­pect that to be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the year, at which time we will look at what the op­tions to man­ag­ing that space to be, to be added in­to room stock of the is­land,” said the Chief Sec­re­tary.

He said the work on the fa­cil­i­ty is en­cour­ag­ing as the Ho­tel would cater to a spe­cif­ic niche mar­ket, dive tourism, giv­en it’s lo­ca­tion in Spey­side, a pop­u­lar div­ing lo­ca­tion with its huge brain coral.

“It’s go­ing to be a much need­ed ad­di­tion, since it caters, it will cater specif­i­cal­ly to the dive mar­ket,” said Den­nis.

How­ev­er there was no such good news for the Sanc­tu­ary Vil­la, which Den­nis said the THA was still shop­ping around for po­ten­tial in­vestors and man­agers.

“In terms of  Sanc­tu­ary, we have made no new arrange­ment with that fa­cil­i­ty as well. So the sit­u­a­tion is still the same. We are ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing an in­vestor with the hope of com­ing in, tak­ing over the fa­cil­i­ty, in­vest­ing in it, as it re­lates to the con­struc­tion and ren­o­va­tion and of course the hope is that you will get such an in­vestor to man­age the space as well. Al­right, so Sanc­tu­ary is still on the cards.”

The two prop­er­ties have been a source of con­tention  since their ac­qui­si­tions in 2015. They were bought for a com­bined sum of $32 mil­lion dol­lars ac­cord­ing to the THA. How­ev­er, sev­er­al com­men­ta­tors have ques­tioned the pur­chase, giv­en the lack of fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies un­der­tak­en be­fore the prop­er­ties were pur­chased as well as the con­tin­ued ex­pense in­curred for se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance of the prop­er­ties which have not, to date, housed a sin­gle guest since their ac­qui­si­tions.

But at the mo­ment Den­nis, and much of the To­ba­go tourism in­dus­try have been buoyed by the re­cent an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the bor­ders could po­ten­tial­ly re­open in less than two months.

Den­nis told the Busi­ness Guardian that the news was met with a sense of re­lief by the peo­ple of To­ba­go, who have seen their ma­jor in­dus­try come to a screech­ing halt due to the bor­der clo­sure.

The is­land had been giv­en a slight boost by do­mes­tic tourism ear­li­er this year, but that too was put on pause due to re­cent­ly in­creased re­stric­tions in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I think per­sons are more or less re­lieved since there ap­pears to be light at the end of tun­nel. Of course as you would know, To­ba­go’s Tourism sec­tor was dev­as­tat­ed by this pan­dem­ic. So it re­al­ly gives us hope at this point in time,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said that the is­land was al­ready in process of putting things in place to en­sure the re­turn of tourism is a smooth ride.

“In terms of plans, as we speak, we are putting a com­mit­tee in place to re­view all the process­es to en­sure that the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols and sys­tems are in place to fa­cil­i­tate a safe and smooth re­open­ing when the time comes. Be­cause of course, these will not be nor­mal cir­cum­stances. COVID-19 has re­al­ly forced us or  pushed us in­to op­er­at­ing on the new nor­mal guide­lines,” Den­nis said.

He ex­plained that the To­ba­go Tourism Agency has been reach­ing out to var­i­ous air­lines to en­sure that when the green light for the bor­der re-open­ing is giv­en, the flights won’t take too long to land at the ANR Robin­son Air­port.

“The To­ba­go Tourism Agency, as they have been do­ing over the past few months, they will con­tin­ue and in­ten­si­fy dis­cus­sions with flights to en­sure that we could have those re­sume when time comes. Of course, mar­ket­ing arrange­ments would al­so in­ten­si­fy, we have been do­ing soft mar­ket­ing even through­out the lock­down pe­ri­od. Just to en­sure that the des­ti­na­tion re­mained rel­e­vant and at the front of the minds of per­sons in our source mar­kets,” he said.

 When the tourists come, they will be com­ing to a far more ac­com­mo­dat­ing To­ba­go, as Den­nis said sig­nif­i­cant steps have been tak­en since the bor­der clo­sure. He ex­plained that the gov­ern­ment grant to al­low for ren­o­va­tions to ho­tels and guest hous­es had been used by 124 prop­er­ties while the THA has done work on de­vel­op­ing sites and at­trac­tions.
 “They utilised that fund­ing to im­prove their fa­cil­i­ties and their of­fer­ings. So that is ex­pect­ed to cause an over­all im­prove­ment to the qual­i­ty of the room stock and fa­cil­i­ties on the is­land,” he said, “In ad­di­tion to that, we have al­so been work­ing on im­prov­ing our sights and at­trac­tions. We have been able to fa­cil­i­tate some re­pairs and im­prove­ments. In ad­di­tion to that, we have been able to ini­ti­ate some new projects as it re­lates to the tourism friend­ly spaces. So a num­ber of them are still on­go­ing and we’re hop­ing to have them com­plet­ed with­in the next three months.”

Those projects which are still on­go­ing in­clude work on the Buc­coo board­walk as well as de­vel­op­ment of the Char­lot­teville beach­front and Lit­tle Rock­ly Bay.

Plans for im­prove­ment are al­so in place in To­ba­go’s cap­i­tal Scar­bor­ough in and around  the I Love To­ba­go sign with ad­just­ments al­so planned for Mil­ford Road to aid in the  fa­cil­i­ta­tion of Crew ship ar­rivals. How­ev­er Den­nis sought to ad­dress some­thing else about To­ba­go’s Tourism sec­tor: Cus­tomer ser­vice.

“While the fo­cus would be  on more the in­fra­struc­tur­al things we ex­pect­ing to launch by next month, cus­tomer ser­vice, a cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing pro­gram and is go­ing to be is­land-wide fo­cused on tourism sec­tor op­er­a­tives. Per­sons in­volved in the ser­vice in­dus­try and is­land gen­er­al­ly, that is ex­pect to gross­ly im­prove our cus­tomer ser­vice on the is­land,” said Den­nis, who ex­plained that they had sought out the aid of the Sin­ga­pore based group Up­lift­ing Ser­vice to un­der­take this train­ing.

The in­ter­na­tion­al en­ti­ty will part­ner with the To­ba­go Tourism Agency and the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute to pro­vide the cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing across the is­land.

Den­nis said he was al­so look­ing for­ward to the re­designed ANR Robin­son air­port, which he said was on­go­ing but still two years away from com­ple­tion.