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Friday, February 28, 2025

Tobago’s Blue Haven hotel set to reopen before Christmas

by

Camille McEachnie
1303 days ago
20210805
Aerial view of Blue Haven Hotel, Tobago

Aerial view of Blue Haven Hotel, Tobago

COURTESY BLUE HAVEN HOTEL

Camille McEach­nie

Blue Haven Ho­tel own­er Karl Pil­stl says he is con­fi­dent To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor will bounce back.

He said yes­ter­day that plans to ren­o­vate and re­open his 50-room ho­tel in Ba­co­let be­fore Christ­mas, as hol­i­day­mak­ers have al­ready made book­ings for Christ­mas and New Year’s cel­e­bra­tions.

He closed the es­tab­lish­ment in March 2020, fol­low­ing this coun­try’s first record­ed case of COVID-19 and left for Aus­tria - his home­land.

Un­til then, he had been in To­ba­go’s ho­tel in­dus­try for 25 years, he told Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone.

The hote­lier said he and his wife Mar­i­lyn were lured by the is­land’s “lo­ca­tion, amaz­ing na­ture and rain­for­est, un­spoiled beach­es and healthy en­vi­ron­ment.”

“In 2005, To­ba­go tourism was boom­ing be­cause of 15 in­ter­na­tion­al flights per week. Be­sides full em­ploy­ment, in ho­tels and restau­rants, every­body was do­ing busi­ness. We bought al­most 500 pounds of fresh fish every week and fresh pro­duce, es­pe­cial­ly or­gan­ic pro­duce from lo­cal farm­ers,” Pil­stl said.

He said the is­land’s econ­o­my en­joyed the trick­le-down eco­nom­ic ef­fect, as en­ter­tain­ers, taxi dri­vers, tour guides and dive op­er­a­tors ben­e­fit­ed.

Pil­stl said he per­se­vered dur­ing the lean years.

“Once in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines stopped fly­ing to To­ba­go, tourist ar­rival fig­ures dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly. In ad­di­tion, the prob­lems with the sea and air­bridge start­ed,” he said.

“Even fam­i­lies who came with their kids every year had to can­cel their va­ca­tion be­cause they could not get a tick­et. Some were even strand­ed and could not get back on time. It was eas­i­er for them to trav­el to oth­er Caribbean is­lands than to To­ba­go. So we lost a lot of lo­cal tourism too.”

How­ev­er, he be­lieves the in­dus­try will rise again.

“Economies run in cy­cles! The fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the new air­port, com­bined with a prop­er mar­ket­ing cam­paign, will at­tract in­creased air­lift and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly tourism busi­ness will go up again. We have new boats (Buc­coo Reef and APT James ), so we can win back tourists.”

He said his ho­tel won an award from the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Is­land Mag­a­zine in 2007 be­cause he in­cor­po­rat­ed his skills as a trained en­gi­neer dur­ing the ho­tel’s re­fur­bish­ment, mak­ing it a con­sumer of low en­er­gy.

“It has a so­lar-based wa­ter heat­ing sys­tem us­ing nat­ur­al cross ven­ti­la­tion for cool­ing pur­pos­es, con­sum­ing less than half the elec­tric­i­ty of a con­ven­tion­al ho­tel.”

In 2019, the ho­tel won an­oth­er award as To­ba­go’s lead­ing ho­tel at the World Tourism Awards in Mon­tego Bay.

The ful­ly-vac­ci­nat­ed ho­tel own­er said he ex­pects to re­turn from Aus­tria soon to be­gin ren­o­vat­ing the ho­tel again and is await­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al flight from Eu­rope or the Unit­ed King­dom.

Like the rest of the world, To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor was hit hard by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Trade and De­vel­op­ment’s June 2021 re­port in­di­cat­ed that the glob­al econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to lose $4 tril­lion for 2020 and 2021 be­cause of de­creased in­ter­na­tion­al tourist ar­rivals.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis ap­point­ed a 12-man team last month to look at plans for the safe re­open­ing of the sec­tor and its sus­tain­abil­i­ty.


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