Tourism stake­hold­ers are con­cerned about the lack of em­pha­sis on the sec­tor in the elec­tion cam­paigns and man­i­festos pre­sent­ed by the com­pet­ing par­ties for next week’s poll.

In the past week, the ma­jor par­ties vy­ing for lead­er­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go re­leased their man­i­festos, but the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion on tourism or in some cas­es the fail­ure to men­tion the sec­tor at all is be­ing seen as a grim sign.

Re­cent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) Regi­nald Mac Lean not­ed that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) did have a few notes about tourism. Still, he felt much of the ref­er­ences to the in­dus­try were vague.

He said, “There’s re­al­ly not much meat to it, be­cause at the end of the day, there’s noth­ing on any of the ones I’ve read there about what hap­pens to the ex­ist­ing tourism prop­er­ties, the ho­tels, the guest hous­es, the bread and break­fast op­er­a­tors, the dive op­er­a­tors, all of those things. There’s a lit­tle bit of eco-tourism, but there re­al­ly isn’t a hell of a lot of de­tail of any­thing that they’re go­ing to do.”

Even more con­cern­ing for Mac Lean was the fact that both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front had no sig­nif­i­cant men­tion of tourism in their plans. How­ev­er, he ex­plained that he planned to send let­ters to the oth­er par­ties sim­i­lar to those sent by the As­so­ci­a­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials last week which high­light­ed four ur­gent is­sues af­fect­ing the is­land’s tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor.

“The UNC man­i­festo. I didn’t see very much in there so I hope that some­thing is com­ing out. And based on the let­ters that we have sent out from the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, I sure­ly hope that with­in the next few days be­fore elec­tions, that some­thing con­crete comes out for tourism be­cause we’ve asked for spe­cif­ic items in there,” Mac Lean told the Busi­ness Guardian, “From my fo­cus, I think it’s too vague from both par­ties and I say both par­ties be­cause I re­al­ly looked on­line for stuff from Mikela Pan­day and the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, and I did not find any­thing in there.”

In the PNM man­i­festo, Mac Lean felt there were a few plans that could be built up for the ben­e­fit of To­ba­go’s Tourism sec­tor but still felt it large­ly fell short.

“There’s noth­ing on the for­eign in­vest­ment and for­eign own­er­ship re­al­ly in­side of them,” said Mac Lean.

“They’re talk­ing about a mod­ernised Scar­bor­ough port. Well, I hope that hap­pens. And I would ac­tu­al­ly love to see a cruise ship port in Char­lottesville as well.”

He said, how­ev­er, if the har­bour in Scar­bor­ough is up­grad­ed, there should be work done to make side­walks in the To­ba­go city more ac­ces­si­ble and safer for pedes­tri­ans.

He al­so called for the im­prove­ment of tourist sites like the Botan­ic Gar­dens to im­prove at­trac­tions for cruise vis­i­tors walk­ing around Scar­bor­ough.

An­oth­er stake­hold­er, Cruise Ship tour op­er­a­tor Charles Car­vahlo said he was not sur­prised by the lim­it­ed fo­cus on tourism as it had been par for the course for most elec­tion cam­paigns.

He said, “Nei­ther of them, re­al­ly and tru­ly speak to tourism at any great length and that’s if that’s the is­sue I have. Elec­tion af­ter elec­tion, they speak tourism, but they nev­er go to the ex­treme to say, what (will be done.)”

Car­vahlo felt that par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of chal­lenges with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, there may have been more em­pha­sis on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with Tourism as a fo­cal point.

How­ev­er, he felt the cam­paign­ing to date does not ap­pear to view tourism as a pri­or­i­ty.

“They just don’t re­alise that we have a tourism prod­uct to sell,” he said.

“Men­tion­ing tourism is one thing, but tourism is broad. What they should be say­ing is that they will be con­cen­trat­ing a lot on the mar­ket­ing of the des­ti­na­tion. Mar­ket­ing is what we need.”

Car­vahlo said even if the par­ties start­ed speak­ing about tourism on the plat­form at the 11th hour, he would be scep­ti­cal as it should have had more fo­cus in their cam­paigns ear­li­er.

To­ba­go busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad al­so felt there was too lit­tle men­tion of tourism plans by all com­pet­ing par­ties, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a pe­ri­od where for­eign ex­change short­ages are a cru­cial con­cern for the coun­try.

Hadad said, “The ref­er­ences to tourism are very scant in ei­ther par­ty’s man­i­festo, un­less there’s some­thing deep­er and wider that they are not telling us at this stage. How­ev­er, that is con­cern­ing be­cause it means that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion does not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­clude tourism in a big way, and it (tourism) is a ma­jor earn­er of for­eign ex­change.”

The lack of in­for­ma­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing for Hadad, as she felt the To­ba­go tourism sec­tor was at a cru­cial cross­roads giv­en the re­cent ex­pan­sion of the ANR Robin­son air­port and the re­cent re-ig­ni­tion of talks with San­dals.

“We need to make it (the air­port) use­ful, then the com­mit­ments to San­dals or any oth­er ho­tel chain, or ho­tels on the whole, for par­tic­i­pa­tion on the is­land in terms of in­vest­ments, un­less we speak the prop­er lan­guage and put the things in place, then we will cre­ate cause for con­cern again,” said Hadad who had long not­ed the is­land’s tourism sec­tor had been strug­gling to re­cov­er fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She felt it was cru­cial for To­ba­go to seize po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties in tourism at this time.

“In To­ba­go’s in­stance, we are in a very cru­cial place. We are al­most stand­ing on the mid­dle of a bridge and it’s ei­ther we get a ho­tel or ho­tel busi­ness to get go­ing and con­tin­ue over the bridge. The bridge ei­ther col­laps­es with us falling down straight in the mid­dle, or we go back­wards,” she said.

“That’s the three op­tions in front of To­ba­go right now.”

She said be­cause of this, it was im­por­tant that the as­pir­ing lead­ers of the coun­try bring for­ward an ac­tion­able plan con­cern­ing the in­dus­try.

“Where is the plan in any of the pre­sen­ta­tions? It is not clear and that, for me, is of con­cern, be­cause tourism is im­por­tant, as I said, Dr Row­ley has put a feath­er in his cap by that air­port in To­ba­go, but I’m not sure how many oth­er se­crets there are that we are not be­ing told but we need to make that air­port use­ful and tourism needs to be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion.

“Sor­ry, not a con­ver­sa­tion any­more. It needs to be a con­tin­ued ac­tion plan now. No longer con­ver­sa­tions. We talk too much in this coun­try. Ac­tion plan,” she said.