The list of To­ba­go ho­tels set to re­ceive por­tions of the Gov­ern­ment's $50 mil­lion bailout fea­tures busi­ness­es with­out a prop­er room count and no on­line pres­ence, says the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA). In fact, the body says they have nev­er heard of some of the busi­ness­es set to re­ceive State mon­ey.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the TH­TA ques­tioned whom the ad­di­tion­al and un­known busi­ness­es be­longed to, adding of the list of 449 busi­ness­es many are un­known to the ho­tel in­dus­try.

The group al­so ac­cused the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) of list­ing un­reg­is­tered busi­ness­es to col­lect State mon­ey.

"It is par­tic­u­lar­ly puz­zling to us how TTAL and the THA came up with a com­bined fig­ure of 449 small and medi­um-sized prop­er­ties when hav­ing seen the list from TTAL, 116 list­ed have no room count and 154 list­ed have no on­line con­tent, many are un­known to us. We can on­ly as­sume that the THA in­tends to dis­burse funds to pre­vi­ous­ly un­reg­is­tered busi­ness­es/sole pro­pri­etors that have been op­er­at­ing out­side of the le­gal frame­work, " the TH­TA said.

The THA and the TTAL are re­spon­si­ble for the dis­burse­ment of some $50 mil­lion made avail­able by the Gov­ern­ment to as­sist ho­tels with up­grades dur­ing the slow pe­ri­od as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19 trav­el re­stric­tions.

"We re­ject the pro­posed grant dis­tri­b­u­tion out­right and are ap­peal­ing to the THA to re­vise their strat­e­gy im­me­di­ate­ly in or­der to bring some much-need­ed re­lief to this crit­i­cal in­dus­try," the body said.

"We pro­pose that the THA aban­don this method of grant dis­tri­b­u­tion."

The TH­TA in­stead asked that the grant be placed un­der the con­trol of the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Unit of the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment and Labour. It said the grants and/or loans can then be made avail­able to qual­i­fy­ing ap­pli­cants from the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor at low in­ter­est rates for 10 years with a mora­to­ri­um on re­pay­ment for two years.

The group al­so said the process of ap­ply­ing for the grants was "oner­ous", which made it dif­fi­cult for small and medi­um-sized ho­tels to ap­ply.

"This could be the end for many small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, most of whom were al­ready suf­fer­ing be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit Trinidad and To­ba­go, " the re­lease said.

Ac­cord­ing to the hote­liers, there are over 5,000 peo­ple work­ing in the To­ba­go tourism in­dus­try, which is the largest em­ploy­er af­ter the THA.

"The large ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor em­ploys over 1,000 peo­ple, yet this sec­tor has in­ex­plic­a­bly been award­ed the small­est pro­por­tion of the re­lief grant," the group said.

"The large ho­tels alone pay in ex­cess of $33 mil­lion in tax­es an­nu­al­ly. It is the large and medi­um-sized prop­er­ties that guar­an­tee air­lift, as for­eign tour op­er­a­tors will gen­er­al­ly not con­tract with small ac­com­mo­da­tion providers.

"Ne­glect­ing the large ho­tels will on­ly de­lay, or worse yet pre­vent, the re­vival of an al­ready frag­ile in­dus­try, most of whose em­ploy­ees have yet to re­ceive any salary or rent re­lief grants."

The group said while they ap­pre­ci­ate the Gov­ern­ment ho­n­our­ing its com­mit­ment to aid the re­cov­ery of the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor, "we con­sid­er the pro­posed method to be fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed."

It said de­spite sub­mit­ting rec­om­men­da­tions for an eq­ui­table ac­com­mo­da­tion re­lief grant, as re­quest­ed by the THA, "it ap­pears our sug­ges­tions were com­plete­ly ig­nored".

"No con­sid­er­a­tion what­so­ev­er has been giv­en to al­lo­cat­ing funds to ac­com­mo­da­tion providers on a per room ba­sis," the body said.

"TTAL, un­der the di­rec­tion of the THA, has pro­posed a dis­burse­ment of TTD $22M to small prop­er­ties (2-7 rooms), $24M to medi­um-sized prop­er­ties (8-74 rooms) and $4M to large prop­er­ties (75 rooms and above).

"The To­ba­go Tourism in­dus­try has been dec­i­mat­ed by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. We ac­knowl­edge that it is not the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty or in­ten­tion to fund the com­plete up­grade of tourism fa­cil­i­ties to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. How­ev­er, what­ev­er Gov­ern­ment fund­ing is pro­vid­ed must place the tourism in­dus­try on the path to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­creased con­tri­bu­tion to GDP."

The body said it had ex­pressed its con­cerns and giv­en an al­ter­na­tive pro­pos­al to THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis in the hope he could bring res­o­lu­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Den­nis said he would re­lease a state­ment on the mat­ter on Mon­day.