Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go has se­cured a di­rect air link with Toron­to, with Caribbean Air­lines’ in­au­gur­al flight touch­ing down at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day night as the is­land seeks to ex­pand its Cana­di­an tourism mar­ket.

The ar­rival of 61 pas­sen­gers aboard BW615 came less than two weeks af­ter the new bil­lion-dol­lar east ter­mi­nal was opened by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

As Cap­tain Faraz Ho­sein and his crew touched down around 9.27 pm, Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett and As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Nike­ta Per­cy looked on proud­ly.

Pas­sen­gers on the new route were greet­ed by wa­ter can­nons be­fore the cel­e­bra­tions con­tin­ued in­side the east ter­mi­nal with cul­tur­al dancers, steel­pan and Car­ni­val cos­tumes.

The dig­ni­taries wel­comed the pas­sen­gers with hugs and gift bags to mark the his­toric oc­ca­sion.

De­scrib­ing the mo­ment as spe­cial, Za­k­our not­ed it was CAL’s first in­ter­na­tion­al flight to ar­rive at To­ba­go’s new ter­mi­nal. He said au­thor­i­ties had been work­ing for some time to bring the route to fruition and promised air­lift will con­tin­ue to in­crease.

Strug­gling to con­tain her ex­cite­ment, Hack­ett said her di­vi­sion has bud­get­ed $1.5 mil­lion to en­sure the new route is suc­cess­ful. She said the fund­ing cov­ers the launch of the route, ac­ti­va­tion on the ground in Toron­to and Cana­da.

“This is a long time in com­ing,” she said.

Hack­ett cred­it­ed work from her pre­de­ces­sor Tashia Bur­ris, adding she con­tin­ued the ad­vo­ca­cy along­side Au­gus­tine.

“We had to find the mon­ey, in terms of get­ting it done for the mar­ket­ing and the min­i­mum rev­enue guar­an­tee for this flight.”

While the ma­jor­i­ty of vis­i­tors on the in­au­gur­al flight were from the di­as­po­ra, Hack­ett said the aim is to pen­e­trate the leisure mar­ket and at­tract more Cana­di­ans who have nev­er been to To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the June THA bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Hack­ett ap­pealed for more fund­ing for mar­ket­ing. How­ev­er, her hopes were dashed on Oc­to­ber 12 as the THA’s al­lo­ca­tion was re­duced by $200 mil­lion for fis­cal 2027.

Amid fi­nan­cial con­straints, Hack­ett re­mains op­ti­mistic and has man­dat­ed the cre­ative in­dus­tries de­part­ment with­in her di­vi­sion to find more in­no­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing strate­gies. She said the THA will cap­i­talise on the thou­sands of vis­i­tors ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in To­ba­go for the Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1 car­ni­val.

“The cre­ative in­dus­tries de­part­ment of the di­vi­sion has to be built out in a par­tic­u­lar way where we un­der­stand the roles and func­tions of in­flu­encers and con­tent cre­ators.”

She said sev­er­al lo­cal and re­gion­al con­tent cre­ators have con­tact­ed the THA seek­ing to col­lab­o­rate for the fes­ti­val.

“They have been say­ing, ‘Just get us out there. We want to build on our fol­low­ers, and, in the same way, we will build brand aware­ness for you.’”

She said her di­vi­sion must em­brace the val­ue of so­cial me­dia and the im­pact of con­tent cre­ators.

New route seen as

ma­jor de­vel­op­ment

Mean­while, sev­er­al pas­sen­gers hailed the new route as a ma­jor de­vel­op­ment to ease their trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence.

Kel­ly Seep­er­sad, a Tri­ni-born Cana­di­an who is here for Car­ni­val, said she en­joyed the di­rect con­nec­tion. While not­ing hav­ing a con­nect­ing flight in Trinidad al­lows her to vis­it rel­a­tives there, she said hav­ing the choice to en­ter To­ba­go di­rect­ly was a plus.

Cana­di­an Paul Hec­tor, who is orig­i­nal­ly from Sig­nal Hill, said he pre­ferred elim­i­nat­ing the has­sle of board­ing mul­ti­ple flights be­fore reach­ing his des­ti­na­tion.

“That is amaz­ing; it is sav­ing a lot of time. I have been through Trinidad many, many times, hav­ing de­lays, get­ting pushed around. Hav­ing a di­rect flight from Toron­to is a gamechang­er,” he said.

Cana­di­an Nicholas Paul, who is al­so play­ing mas for Car­ni­val, said he too en­joyed the ef­fi­cien­cy of the route. How­ev­er, he said see­ing the new ter­mi­nal for the first time left him in awe.

“It is nice. I was so shocked. I had no idea this was done,” he said.

Ce­cile Ablack, who is al­so orig­i­nal­ly from To­ba­go, said she flew from Los An­ge­les to Toron­to to catch the di­rect flight. She too praised the new fa­cil­i­ty.

“I re­mem­ber when it was a hut. I am dat­ing my­self, but I re­mem­ber when it was a hut. A hut was very charm­ing, but this is fan­tas­tic.”