A To­ba­go based restau­rant own­er be­lieves that To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor is strate­gi­cal­ly poised to re­bound from COVID-19.

And al­though the des­ti­na­tion spent the last decade strug­gling to re­cov­er from the glob­al re­ces­sion of 2008, To­ba­go’s tourism may fi­nal­ly be on the right path.

Own­er of Sea­horse Inn Nicholas Hard­wick said hav­ing been in busi­ness for twen­ty-five years, the Sea­horse Inn at Grafton, has had to weath­er many storms, how­ev­er, when COVID-19 hit, To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor was show­ing pos­i­tive signs of re­cov­ery.

“Up to the day when we were closed down it was the 25, the an­niver­sary of our open­ing, we were at that time en­joy­ing the best win­ter sea­son and I don’t mean just the Sea­horse Inn I think a lot of busi­ness­es in To­ba­go were en­joy­ing the best win­ter we had en­coun­tered for some years.”

He said the Sea­horse Inn saw an im­prove­ment in terms of the num­ber of restau­rant din­ers and the av­er­age spend per cus­tomer.

Hard­wick, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion said the fi­nan­cial crash of 2008 changed the economies of scale and this high­light­ed a num­ber of in­ad­e­qua­cies in the des­ti­na­tion, but things were start­ing to pick up on the is­land.

How­ev­er, he said the pan­dem­ic brought that mo­men­tum to a halt, and this will change the dy­nam­ics of the in­dus­try, and it re­mains to be seen how stake­hold­ers cope as the rest of the world is strug­gling to cope with the pan­dem­ic.

“There has been in­vest­ment in a new air­port, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of in­fra­struc­tur­al work in To­ba­go, and a rel­a­tive­ly new To­ba­go Tourism Agency that has forged a world-re­spect­ed brand that is do­ing great things with mar­ket­ing and help­ing to man­age the process of im­prov­ing the prod­uct.”

He said while he doesn’t dis­agree with the gov­ern­ment’s ban on in-house din­ing for restau­rants and bars, curb­side pick up does not fit in with his busi­ness mod­el.

“Our main busi­ness was seat­ed din­ing we have an open-air restau­rant and we al­so have an in­te­ri­or din­ing restau­rant as well and so hav­ing to re­sort to a take­away for­mat al­so takes away a lot of the draw that peo­ple would have to come to us in the first place.”

His lo­ca­tion al­so doesn’t have the con­cen­tra­tion of peo­ple to make a take­away ser­vice jus­ti­fi­able like ur­ban ar­eas such as Scar­bor­ough and Crown Point where there is more traf­fic.

Hard­wick said he has not been able to see any ma­jor ben­e­fits from the sys­tem.

“To­bag­o­ni­ans are very self-suf­fi­cient, they are very re­silient they like to cook so with­out that Trinidad mar­ket with­out that in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket it’s dif­fi­cult but its some­thing we have to con­tend with.”

The com­pa­ny has had to make the sac­ri­fice and re­tain all 26 of their staff mem­bers as ac­cord­ing to the restau­ra­teur, “my staff is my busi­ness.”

He said he is cur­rent­ly us­ing the slow pe­ri­od to un­der­take up­grade work on the restau­rant and even as he an­tic­i­pates the gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of when he can re­sume op­er­a­tions ful­ly, he is even more in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing how COVID-19 is go­ing to be man­aged when the econ­o­my is ful­ly re­opened.