With Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders set to re­open lat­er this month; the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts is prepar­ing by train­ing over 700 tourism stake­hold­ers, and work­ing with the Min­istry of Health to en­sure that stake­hold­ers are vac­ci­nat­ed.

The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial re­lease from the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts out­lin­ing the prepa­ra­tions for the bor­der re­open­ing.

“The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, through its agen­cies, Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL) and To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL), has be­gun the roll­out of the COVID-19 Pro­to­cols for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism Sec­tor 2021.

Over 200 es­tab­lish­ments in To­ba­go were is­sued with the Safe Trav­els Stamp from the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC) while TTL trained and is­sued cer­tifi­cates to over 450 op­er­a­tors on achiev­ing COVID-19 com­pli­ance and readi­ness.

TTL al­so part­nered with the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) to train and pro­mote the Caribbean Trav­ellers Health As­sur­ance Stamp and the Caribbean Trav­ellers Health App.

TTL in col­lab­o­ra­tion with TTAL and the MOH, will em­bark on train­ing of over 700 tourism stake­hold­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing tour guides, tour op­er­a­tors and tourist trans­porta­tion providers.

The train­ing, which will be­gin on Fri­day, Ju­ly 16, 2021 and will last un­til Au­gust, will be con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Min­istry of Health-ap­proved COVID-19 Pro­to­cols for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism Sec­tor.

It will be fol­lowed by a rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion process to en­sure strict ad­her­ence to the pro­to­cols. And as part of its wider en­gage­ment plan, the Min­istry along with TTL and TTAL will to­day meet with the Pres­i­dents of all the ma­jor tourism or­gan­i­sa­tions ahead of the re­open­ing of the coun­try’s bor­ders on Sat­ur­day 17 Ju­ly 2021.

More­over, the Min­istry is work­ing with the MOH to vac­ci­nate tourism stake­hold­ers.

The COVID-19 Pro­to­cols for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourism Sec­tor are recog­nised, test­ed guide­lines to di­rect the sec­tor’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions, pro­tect the health of tourism sec­tor em­ploy­ees, guests, and the com­mu­ni­ty and in­stil con­fi­dence in the mind of trav­ellers that sys­tems are in place at the des­ti­na­tion to pro­tect them.

They will as­sist tourism op­er­a­tors with achiev­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Safe Trav­els Stamp from the WTTC.

“These pro­to­cols, with their sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed guide­lines, can now be used by tourism ser­vice providers across the eight tourism sec­tors.

They al­low the sec­tor to op­er­ate safe­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, pro­tect­ing our op­er­a­tors and vis­i­tors from COVID-19,” said Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Ran­dall Mitchell, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts.

Ad­her­ence to the pro­to­cols will safe­guard both vis­i­tors and tourism op­er­a­tors. They iden­ti­fy clear re­quire­ments, pro­ce­dures, com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, strate­gies etc. that will re­duce the risk of trans­mis­sion of the COVID-19 virus if fol­lowed.

Ran­dom spot checks will be con­duct­ed on op­er­a­tions is­sued with the Safe Trav­els Stamp. If the tourism op­er­a­tor does not com­ply with the re­quire­ments of the pro­to­cols, the stamp will be with­drawn.

Min­is­ter Mitchell said, “All tourism stake­hold­ers must adapt to an en­vi­ron­ment where both vis­i­tor and per­son­al safe­ty is para­mount.

The re­open­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the tourism re­cov­ery process.

For this rea­son, the Min­istry is en­sur­ing that tourism stake­hold­ers are well equipped to wel­come our long-await­ed guests safe­ly.

The suc­cess­ful restart of the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try de­pends on vac­ci­na­tions on the one hand, and the con­fi­dence of trav­ellers in the pre­pared­ness of des­ti­na­tions to pro­tect against the virus.”

The pro­to­cols were de­vel­oped from a broad cross-sec­tion of agen­cies such as CARPHA, the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Unit­ed Na­tions World Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (UNWTO), the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Caribbean Air­lines, among oth­ers.”