Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val book­ings are hold­ing steady but hote­liers fear the late-De­cem­ber de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency (SoE) has hurt the is­land’s abil­i­ty to at­tract more for­eign vis­i­tors in the up­com­ing peak sea­sons.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­pha Lorde yes­ter­day said while do­mes­tic trav­el from Trinidad re­mains con­sis­tent, in­ter­na­tion­al book­ings have sharply de­clined.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Lorde said an SoE of any kind or form sends a mes­sage, es­pe­cial­ly to for­eign trav­ellers.

“Every ho­tel would re­port sig­nif­i­cant de­clines com­pared to last year and the year be­fore. The var­i­ous trav­el ad­vi­sories and the SoE have made peo­ple hes­i­tant to book,” Lorde not­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment de­clared the SoE on De­cem­ber 30, with­out cur­few or re­stric­tions, sole­ly tar­get­ing crim­i­nals. Still, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter, hote­liers re­port­ed can­cel­la­tions. Lorde said it has been dif­fi­cult to tell trav­ellers there’s an SoE and then ex­pect them to see it as busi­ness as usu­al.

“For ex­am­ple, in Jan­u­ary, those sales in terms of room nights booked, com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, it’s sharply down, and if you look at the pre­vi­ous sale in Sep­tem­ber, it trav­elled on par with the sale from the Sep­tem­ber be­fore. So, it is rea­son­able to con­clude that this SoE has had an im­pact on per­sons’ de­ci­sion to book,” he ex­plained.

De­spite con­cerns, Lorde said To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val pe­ri­od is per­form­ing as ex­pect­ed, with post-Car­ni­val book­ings re­main­ing strong. Ac­cord­ing to Lorde, vis­i­tors who come for the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion in Trinidad of­ten ex­tend their trip by un­wind­ing in To­ba­go, a trend that has re­mained con­sis­tent in re­cent years.

“There’s a pe­ri­od im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Car­ni­val when all the per­sons who came for the cel­e­bra­tions de­cide to cool off in To­ba­go. We’re see­ing de­cent num­bers go­ing in­to Car­ni­val, and we’re see­ing what I think are even bet­ter num­bers for the pe­ri­od af­ter,” he said.

How­ev­er, ho­tels are strug­gling to fill rooms that would typ­i­cal­ly be booked by in­ter­na­tion­al tourists flock­ing to the is­land for the win­ter sea­son.

“There’s no work­ing around that. It’s hard to ar­gue with the se­cu­ri­ty needs of the coun­try, but it’s al­so hard to jus­ti­fy the busi­ness­es los­ing the way we are los­ing and just cor­re­late it to se­cu­ri­ty needs,” Lorde said.

He said the im­pact on in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el has been se­vere.

“The re­al­i­ty is the win­ter sea­son is al­most gone for us. Ho­tels are re­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­clines. If we look at win­ter sales, for in­stance, room nights booked in Jan­u­ary were sharply down com­pared to pre­vi­ous years,” he added.

While East­er is ex­pect­ed to see strong book­ings, Lorde warns that flight avail­abil­i­ty al­so re­mains a chal­lenge.

“We al­ways see strong num­bers for East­er. The small­er prop­er­ties will like­ly be near full, and the larg­er ho­tels should reach around 50-60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy. But we have to wait and see be­cause flights to and from the des­ti­na­tion con­tin­ue to be a chal­lenge,” he said.

While To­ba­go’s do­mes­tic mar­ket is keep­ing the in­dus­try afloat, Lorde says in­ter­na­tion­al tourism needs to re­bound af­ter in the post-SoE pe­ri­od.

He said, “There are a lot of in­fra­struc­ture pieces that need to go in­to sup­port­ing that bounce back. The de­mand Is there, but we have to make To­ba­go an at­trac­tive, easy-to-reach des­ti­na­tion again.”