To­ba­go has been award­ed Sil­ver in the Trav­el In­dus­try Club (TIC) Des­ti­na­tion Awards held in Ger­many on Sep­tem­ber 13th.

A state­ment is­sued by the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) says the award is clear recog­ni­tion of TTAL’s evolved strat­e­gy for the in­dus­try in re­sponse to COVID-19, and on-is­land ini­tia­tives aimed at repo­si­tion­ing the des­ti­na­tion for re­cov­ery.

TTAL ex­plains that Trav­el In­dus­try Club (TIC) is an in­flu­en­tial as­so­ci­a­tion of trav­el lead­ers in Ger­many—the largest out­bound tourism coun­try in Eu­rope, and a key source mar­ket for many long-haul des­ti­na­tions such as To­ba­go. The TIC Des­ti­na­tion Award ho­n­ours a coun­try/is­land/city/re­gion that has changed in the past months, evolv­ing their tourism de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing strate­gies in ar­eas of hy­giene, safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Win­ners are se­lect­ed af­ter a rig­or­ous pre-se­lec­tion process and anony­mous vot­ing by a ju­ry made up of ex­perts from all seg­ments of the trav­el in­dus­try as well as trend re­searchers, man­age­ment con­sul­tants, agen­cies and pub­lish­ers.

The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed’s sub­mis­sion for To­ba­go was award­ed Sil­ver (2nd place) in the Des­ti­na­tion Award cat­e­go­ry, sur­pass­ing big play­ers such as Ger­many’s most pop­u­lar hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion, Bavaria; strong des­ti­na­tion lead­ers like Tener­ife and Slove­nia; and com­pet­ing long-haul des­ti­na­tions in­clud­ing Co­lum­bia. The Gold award went to the Hun­srück-Hochwald Na­tion­al Park in Ger­many.

To­ba­go’s sub­mis­sion in­clud­ed de­tails on the WTTC “Safe Trav­els” stamp, tourism sec­tor re­lief grants, re­spon­sive in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, and on-is­land sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the Blue Flag and Green Key cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams.

Of­fi­cials at TIC com­mend­ed To­ba­go’s award-win­ning pre­sen­ta­tion, stat­ing the fol­low­ing in their con­grat­u­la­to­ry let­ter to TTAL CEO Louis Lewis:

“Among a list of es­tab­lished des­ti­na­tions and well-known fi­nal­ists such as Tener­ife, Co­lum­bia or Bavaria your [To­ba­go’s] ap­pli­ca­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion re­al­ly stood out and con­vinced the ju­ry with a well-round­ed con­cept in­clud­ing new trends like sus­tain­abil­i­ty, an ap­proach clear­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing To­ba­go from oth­er Caribbean des­ti­na­tions, a very like­able pre­sen­ta­tion, and a lot of com­mit­ment, al­so shown by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of your­self across time zones.”

TTAL says this sig­nif­i­cant recog­ni­tion by Ger­many’s Trav­el In­dus­try Club has placed a pos­i­tive spot­light on To­ba­go in its sec­ond-largest source mar­ket. In ad­di­tion to the is­land be­ing fea­tured on TIC’s on­line plat­forms and pro­mot­ed with­in their ex­ten­sive net­works as award win­ners, this win will help raise the pro­file of the des­ti­na­tion amongst key trav­el trade in­flu­encers in Ger­many, and po­si­tion To­ba­go to take ad­van­tage of the Eu­ro­pean coun­try’s boom­ing trav­el and tourism econ­o­my.

“The TIC is a net­work of in­flu­en­tial prac­ti­tion­ers in the largest out­bound trav­el mar­ket, and one of the coun­tries with the largest GDP con­tri­bu­tion in Trav­el and Tourism. They know what they are about when it comes to trav­el and tourism, there­fore plac­ing To­ba­go top of mind with­in this net­work in times of un­cer­tain­ty helps to build part­ner con­fi­dence, cred­i­bil­i­ty for To­ba­go and op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­cov­ery,” Sheena Des Vi­gnes, Mar­ket­ing Co­or­di­na­tor at TTAL not­ed in the re­lease on the Agency’s win.

She added: “It has been dif­fi­cult to con­tin­u­ous­ly keep the des­ti­na­tion rel­e­vant with trade and con­sumers con­sid­er­ing our cur­rent on-is­land COVID-19 chal­lenges, so align­ing with this award was one of the many tac­ti­cal de­ci­sions TTAL made to keep To­ba­go front of mind to the right au­di­ence, with the right mes­sage, as an in­vest­ment in cur­rent and fu­ture plans for re­cov­ery.”