Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go hote­liers are an­tic­i­pat­ing a bumper East­er hol­i­day sea­son as vis­i­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly Tri­nis, seem set to flock to the is­land with their fam­i­lies.

All flights from Trinidad to To­ba­go from March 26 to April 4 have al­ready been sold out, while there are just a few seats avail­able on the seabridge, tourism au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed yes­ter­day. Sail­ings to To­ba­go on Holy Thurs­day and Good Fri­day (April 2 and 3) are com­plete­ly sold out.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean is an­tic­i­pat­ing over 80 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy for the East­er pe­ri­od.

He said, “I think To­ba­go is very busy for East­er. I an­tic­i­pate To­ba­go should be up­wards of 80 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy by now in most places and hope­ful­ly that is how it is, at least for the Fri­day, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.”

MacLean said al­though the num­bers are trend­ing in the right di­rec­tion, air trans­porta­tion to the is­land re­mains a chal­lenge.

“Flights are still a prob­lem. We need ad­di­tion­al air­lift on the air­bridge,” he said.

MacLean be­lieves the so­lu­tion is to al­low oth­er car­ri­ers oth­er than Caribbean Air­lines on the air­bridge.

“For the peak pe­ri­ods, ad­di­tion­al flights are put on too last minute, and To­ba­go los­es the cus­tomers to oth­er is­lands as a re­sult. We need to fix the book­ing sys­tem, the can­cel­la­tion sys­tem, and the penal­ty sys­tem. That would make things work bet­ter,” he said.

The do­mes­tic route, which costs $400 re­turn, is cur­rent­ly heav­i­ly sub­sidised by the Gov­ern­ment.

For­mer head of civ­il avi­a­tion Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al has said the true cost of a re­turn seat is clos­er to $1,000.

But MacLean said the seabridge, which is cur­rent­ly ser­viced by three pas­sen­ger fer­ries - the APT James, Buc­coo Reef and Galleons Pas­sage - and the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny car­go ves­sel, works ef­fi­cient­ly once all boats are op­er­at­ing. He said ad­di­tion­al sail­ings for peak pe­ri­ods are al­so put on too late.

He al­so queried why au­thor­i­ties place fer­ries in dry dock dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods.

Cur­rent­ly, on­ly the T&T Spir­it is un­avail­able af­ter de­bris drawn in­to its en­gine on Feb­ru­ary 1 caused me­chan­i­cal is­sues.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals CEO Kern Cow­an said vis­i­tors can ex­pect a thrilling East­er week­end, start­ing with Arise, a gospel event, on Glo­ria Sat­ur­day and East­er Sun­day. On East­er Mon­day, the ac­tion shifts to the Mt Pleas­ant Recre­ation Ground for goat races and com­mu­ni­ty sports. On East­er Tues­day, the pop­u­lar crab and goat races take off at the Buc­coo In­te­grat­ed Fa­cil­i­ty.

“The week­end is ex­pect­ed to be a bumper week­end and we are go­ing to sup­port per­sons on the is­land with as much of the To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­ence as pos­si­ble.”