Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean says ac­com­mo­da­tion book­ings for this year’s Car­ni­val could have been much stronger if trav­el to the is­land had been prop­er­ly or­gan­ised in ad­vance.

MacLean told Guardian Me­dia he could not pro­vide fig­ures be­cause the rate con­tin­ues to fluc­tu­ate. He said de­mand ex­ists, but many peo­ple are un­able to get to To­ba­go be­cause flights and fer­ry sail­ings were added too late.

“Oc­cu­pan­cy could be plen­ty, plen­ty bet­ter, but if you can’t get peo­ple to the is­land, what are we go­ing to do?” MacLean said dur­ing an in­ter­view this week.

He said the west­ern end of the is­land is per­form­ing fair­ly well for Car­ni­val, but many guest­hous­es and small prop­er­ties out­side that re­gion are strug­gling to se­cure book­ings.

“Down in the West, be­cause Car­ni­val is in the West, it’s not bad,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said To­ba­go’s long-stand­ing trans­port chal­lenges con­tin­ue to hold the is­land back.

“We’re back to that peren­ni­al prob­lem of flights, flights, flights, seabridge, seabridge, seabridge,” he said.

MacLean said To­ba­go con­tin­ues to suf­fer be­cause de­ci­sions on in­creased trans­port ca­pac­i­ty are made too late every year.

“They take too long to make those de­ci­sions and that’s ex­act­ly what’s hap­pen­ing this year,” he said.

He al­so warned of po­ten­tial can­cel­la­tions.

“You’re go­ing to have a lot of can­cel­la­tions be­cause of the lack of flights,” he said. “Not just flights, re­mem­ber they put on ad­di­tion­al fer­ry ser­vice, but again, these things come out too late.”

MacLean added that in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors need more time to plan ahead if To­ba­go wants Car­ni­val to con­tin­ue grow­ing.

“If you want to get in­ter­na­tion­al peo­ple to come in here, you have to put these things on way in ad­vance and get peo­ple to our is­land ear­ly,” he said.

He said be­cause Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties are con­cen­trat­ed in the west, ho­tels along the east­ern side of To­ba­go have not re­ceived many reser­va­tions.

“There’s noth­ing on the East for Car­ni­val, which I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed about,” he said. “I think we have to re-look at some­thing for the Rox­bor­ough area… and try and boost that, be­cause oc­cu­pan­cy at Car­ni­val is slow.”

MacLean said the is­land can­not grow eco­nom­i­cal­ly if trans­port con­straints con­tin­ue to lim­it ar­rivals.