The To­ba­go Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion wants more tourism stim­u­lus mea­sures

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) says the 2021 fis­cal pack­age pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on Oc­to­ber 5 is “pru­dent and con­ser­v­a­tive,” giv­en the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion brought on by COVID-19.

How­ev­er, they said it stopped short of in­tro­duc­ing all the nec­es­sary mea­sures, giv­en Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment will fo­cus on tourism and agri­cul­ture to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, TH­TA rec­om­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment take spe­cif­ic steps to stim­u­late fur­ther the tourism sec­tor.

It said it wel­comed the news that the Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Project will con­tin­ue un­til 2023.

In March, the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor had to shut its doors be­cause in­ter­na­tion­al and then do­mes­tic bor­ders were closed. Dur­ing that time, the Gov­ern­ment gave them a $50 mil­lion grant to up­grade to their prop­er­ties.

TH­TA sug­gest­ed some of the funds be giv­en to the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor to off­set debts as they had in­come for the first three months of the year and then in Ju­ly.

“The $50 mil­lion has al­ready been al­lo­cat­ed, and any re­main­ing funds should be made avail­able to qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants to pay off debts ac­crued dur­ing the pe­ri­od in which busi­ness­es were closed,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said in the re­lease.

It not­ed that many stake­hold­ers do not meet the cri­te­ria for the ac­com­mo­da­tion grant and thus can­not ac­cess it.

They said since March, when the grant fund­ing was an­nounced, on­ly 53 of the 422 list­ed prop­er­ties have ap­plied for it. Of the 53, “six prop­er­ties have re­ceived 50 per­cent of the grant funds, so far.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion rec­om­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er the fol­low­ing mea­sures: ex­pand the Gov­ern­ment Loan Guar­an­tee Pro­gramme, give reg­is­tered To­ba­go tourism busi­ness­es a Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) ex­emp­tion for five years, make the is­land a Du­ty-Free Zone, and grant a COVID-19 Tax Re­lief.

The ho­tel group al­so wants the Ho­tel Tax Rev­enue used for mar­ket­ing and the Land Li­cence Or­der of Feb­ru­ary 2007, abol­ished.

The ho­tel as­so­ci­a­tion sug­gest­ed they be in­clud­ed in talks be­tween Min­is­ter Im­bert and Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis.