CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Cer­ti­fied tour guides in To­ba­go are prepar­ing to hold dis­cus­sions on any pos­si­ble fall­out from on­go­ing ten­sions in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, as they as­sess how the sit­u­a­tion could af­fect the re­main­der of the tourism sea­son.

William Trim, a re­tired deputy con­ser­va­tor of forests who now works as a tour guide and guide train­er, said mem­bers of the To­ba­go Cer­ti­fied Tour Guide As­so­ci­a­tion were in the process of con­sult­ing ahead of a meet­ing fo­cused on the is­sue.

“We are in the process of con­sult­ing and dis­cussing it among mem­bers to get a wider view as to what are the... if there are any fall­outs, if there are any set­backs as it re­lates to that par­tic­u­lar mat­ter,” Trim said. “And al­so, what can be done, should it turn out to be to be neg­a­tive or very neg­a­tive? How can the sea­son be re­silient? How can things be im­proved?”

Trim, who is vice pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, said the mat­ter has not yet been dis­cussed at a for­mal meet­ing but re­mains un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion among mem­bers.

“So far, it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be,” he said, re­fer­ring to any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact. “Down the road, we don’t know if it would af­fect us great­ly.”

Speak­ing from his own ex­pe­ri­ence as a tour guide, Trim said the cruise ship sea­son had on­ly re­cent­ly be­gun and tra­di­tion­al­ly starts slow­ly be­fore pick­ing up.

“Tech­ni­cal­ly, the cruise ship sea­son just start­ed,” he said. “And hav­ing start­ed, ini­tial­ly it’s slow, and then it picks up.”

He said that, based on his per­son­al re­flec­tion, De­cem­ber has not been as busy as in some pre­vi­ous years, though the month was not yet over.

“There are times when it was very busy in De­cem­ber or busier in De­cem­ber times be­fore,” he said. “So far, yeah. There are a few more days to go.”

Trim ex­plained that the cruise ship sea­son in To­ba­go gen­er­al­ly runs from Oc­to­ber or No­vem­ber each year and that fluc­tu­a­tions in vis­i­tor num­bers can oc­cur for a range of rea­sons.

“Some­times it’s glob­al­ly what’s hap­pen­ing in the world,” he said, point­ing to the im­pact of COVID-19 in pre­vi­ous years. “And then some­times it has to do with the weath­er.”

He said rough seas, per­sis­tent rain­fall and ill­ness among vis­i­tors had con­tributed to some can­cel­la­tions this sea­son.

“We have no con­trol over the weath­er,” he said. “It might have been rain­ing quite a lot. And such guests or clients would have felt that that would not ac­com­mo­date, al­low them to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed or to see or en­joy as much as they would have liked to.”

De­spite this, Trim said the sit­u­a­tion has not had a se­vere im­pact on his own op­er­a­tions.

“When you lose some, you gain some,” he said. “So far, it’s on­ly in the game. You lose some, you gain some.”

On con­cerns sur­round­ing a State of Emer­gency and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, Trim said these is­sues have not fea­tured promi­nent­ly in con­ver­sa­tions with most vis­i­tors.

“So far, no,” he said. “I on­ly had one sit­u­a­tion where guests, two per­sons, asked about the sit­u­a­tion.”

He said those vis­i­tors were well in­formed and un­der­stood the broad­er con­text of the is­sues be­ing dis­cussed.

“What I found is that they’re wide­ly read, and they know some­times the pros and cons about cer­tain things,” he said. “So I haven’t had any can­cel­la­tion to say as it per­tains to that sit­u­a­tion.”

Trim added that tour guides were now be­gin­ning to plan for dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios as part of their prepa­ra­tions.

“We live in a world that has is­sues, chal­lenges, prob­lems,” he said. “What we gen­er­al­ly do as in­di­vid­u­als or or­gan­i­sa­tions is what if sce­nar­ios, what if cer­tain things go wrong, what we are like­ly to do, pos­si­bly do, or we’d like to pos­si­bly re­spond.”

He said the aim was to re­main re­silient and pre­pared as the tourism sea­son con­tin­ues.