GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go stake­hold­ers yes­ter­day of­fered mixed re­ac­tions as the is­land com­mis­sioned its new mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ter­mi­nal at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, with opin­ions split be­tween ex­cite­ment over its po­ten­tial and con­cerns about its im­pact.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as a “white ele­phant” and ex­pressed doubts about its abil­i­ty to con­tribute to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment on the is­land.

“It is al­most cer­tain this is go­ing to be a white ele­phant for the next 25 to 30 years be­cause the foun­da­tion on which an air­port and any oth­er form of in­fra­struc­ture, sea­port, and so on, can be pro­duc­tive for you will have to be laid pri­or to build­ing the air­port,” James said.

The se­nior econ­o­mist em­pha­sised that es­tab­lish­ing strong foun­da­tion­al sys­tems, such as ed­u­ca­tion and tourism, is es­sen­tial for dri­ving To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic growth and over­all de­vel­op­ment.

“And you’ve got to un­der­stand all those kinds of changes as well as the com­mu­ni­ties and the work they have to do to at­tract peo­ple to come in­to the coun­try to stay longer and make mon­ey from them. All those things have to be put in place be­fore you go ahead and do what Row­ley is do­ing there.

“So I don’t think I have any sense that this is go­ing to yield any fruit. The Mag­dale­na is al­most as ex­pen­sive as the air­port. It has brought To­ba­go noth­ing,” James said.

He added that the gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed vast sums of mon­ey with no foun­da­tion in place in To­ba­go, and all of it has gone to waste.

“So To­ba­go is worse off eco­nom­i­cal­ly to­day than be­fore the Mag­dale­na was built,” James added.

The air­port has come at a time when To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tor ar­rivals are low and there­fore is a wel­comed ini­tia­tive, said busi­ness­woman and for­mer head of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Di­ane Hadad.

She not­ed that in 2005, the fig­ures were around 80,000 to 90,000 an­nu­al­ly, but they have since de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“Since 2005, when we got to our high­est num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al flight ar­rivals, which was 87,647, we had prob­lems re­ceiv­ing them. We had 14 in­ter­na­tion­al flights a week, and we had is­sues where there was no VIP wait­ing lounge. The planes could not park prop­er­ly, so by the time the jets parked, too many of the planes were still in close prox­im­i­ty to the run­way,” Hadad ex­plained.

She al­so men­tioned that there is in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture for pas­sen­gers to col­lect their bag­gage com­fort­ably, as well as a lack of prop­er fa­cil­i­ties for ac­cess­ing the air­craft with­out hav­ing to en­dure the sun and rain.

With one in­ter­na­tion­al flight now com­ing to To­ba­go a week, Hadad is very hope­ful that the new fa­cil­i­ty will re­sult in in­creased vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

“If we don’t cre­ate the in­fra­struc­ture for invit­ing peo­ple here and mar­ket­ing To­ba­go, we can­not speak tourism. Whilst it would be a chick­en-and-egg sit­u­a­tion as the prob­lem ex­ist­ed or was cre­at­ed since 2005 and it took us 20 years to fix part of it, now we have to work our way back quick­ly for us to ben­e­fit to get back to that 80-some­thing thou­sand plus pas­sen­gers,” Hadad added.

She said oth­er fa­cil­i­ties like gift shops will not on­ly gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for To­bag­o­ni­ans but will al­so re­sult in earn­ing much-need­ed forex from vis­i­tors.

It must go be­yond sea­wa­ter and sand—George

Mean­while, Mar­tin George, at­tor­ney and chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber, has de­scribed the new fa­cil­i­ty as an ex­cel­lent move and a “nec­es­sary first step,” he not­ed this must be part of a holis­tic plan to de­vel­op To­ba­go’s tourism prod­uct.

He said oth­er fac­tors must be­come crit­i­cal ar­eas of fo­cus, such as the is­land’s ho­tel room stock.

“We need to en­sure that we get that qual­i­ty room stock ... We need to en­sure we have the large brand-name ho­tels, which will bring the air­lines. Let’s be re­al­is­tic. Let’s be se­ri­ous about this. What’s the point of us hav­ing this fa­cil­i­ty if we do not have the through­put of pas­sen­gers to en­sure that we can now say, ‘Yes, this was a job well done, well worth it,’ in the long run?” George said.

Apart from the ho­tel room stock, George ad­vised that en­gage­ment with the var­i­ous air­lines is an­oth­er im­por­tant el­e­ment to en­sure the planes com­ing to To­ba­go are filled. Hand in hand with this is cus­tomer ser­vice, he added.

“I say to To­bag­o­ni­ans, do not mix up ser­vice with servi­tude. You can of­fer high-qual­i­ty ser­vice with­out it be­ing servi­tude ... We need to un­der­stand what tourism is about. It has to go be­yond sea­wa­ter and sand. Every­body has sea­wa­ter and sand, and plen­ty of places have it nicer than us,” George said.

He said hav­ing a “nice ter­mi­nal” should al­so equate to a smooth and in­te­grat­ed ex­pe­ri­ence with cus­toms and im­mi­gra­tion for all pas­sen­gers.

“In To­ba­go, we can’t just do the or­di­nary; we have to do even bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion,” George em­pha­sised as he main­tained that the new ter­mi­nal must be seen as a “new turn­ing point” for the is­land.