Af­ter over a year of closed bor­ders, T&T’s tourism sec­tor has slow­ly be­gun to re-open and wel­come for­eign vis­i­tors.

Still, the tourism sec­tor has large­ly strug­gled due to con­tin­ued un­cer­tain­ty con­cern­ing re­stric­tions as well as the in­creased cost of in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of the Rus­sia/Ukraine con­flict.

In the 2021/2022 bud­get, it was stressed that fo­cus would be placed on in­creas­ing the coun­try’s room stock by as much as 600 rooms.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, “The ex­pan­sion in our ho­tel room stock will en­sure ac­com­mo­da­tion for an ex­pand­ed vis­i­tor pres­ence. The ex­ist­ing tourism in­cen­tives are be­ing utilised to catal­yse new plants and re­fur­bish­ments and ren­o­va­tions of ex­ist­ing plants: Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels (T&T) Ltd is re­con­fig­ur­ing the 55 apart­ment-style gue­stroom ho­tel at the for­mer Carl­ton Sa­van­nah. The new ho­tel, the Brix Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion Ho­tel, will of­fer 163 4-star glob­al stan­dard gue­strooms up­on its open­ing be­fore the end of the year,”

The Brix did in­deed open in Feb­ru­ary 2022, af­ter an es­ti­mat­ed $400 mil­lion was spent on the ho­tel’s ren­o­va­tion and trans­for­ma­tion from its pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion.

While the open­ing co­in­cid­ed with what tra­di­tion­al­ly would have been the peak of the Car­ni­val sea­son and the largest tourist event in the coun­try, T&T held a scaled-down ver­sion of the fes­ti­val due to lin­ger­ing con­cerns about the spread of COVID-19.

The Taste of Car­ni­val at­tract­ed far few­er tourism ac­tiv­i­ties than typ­i­cal­ly ex­pect­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od as a re­sult.

In April, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell told the Par­lia­ment that the to­tal rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion fol­low­ing events held dur­ing the Taste of Car­ni­val was $2,446,584.

This was gar­nered from spon­sor­ship and gate re­ceipts, venue rental, and in­come from ven­dor booth rental, ac­cred­i­ta­tion fees and bar sales, the min­is­ter said.

Dur­ing the Taste of Car­ni­val 2022, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA), Na­pari­ma Bowl and Queen’s Hall, which all fall un­der the Cul­ture and Tourism Min­istry, earned $317,735.25 from host­ing events.

The Taste of Car­ni­val was held fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s al­lo­ca­tion of $15 mil­lion to the NCC and three spe­cial in­ter­est groups—Pan Trin­ba­go, the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) and the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) to host events. An ad­di­tion­al $5 mil­lion was grant­ed for spon­sor­ship sup­port for oth­er safe zone events.

While fo­cus had been placed on ex­pand­ing room stock, Mitchell was ea­ger­ly await­ing the re­sump­tion of nor­mal op­er­a­tions at the NA­PA ho­tel, which was set to be re­vert­ed to his min­istry’s con­trol in April af­ter be­ing used as a step-down fa­cil­i­ty in the Min­istry of Health’s par­al­lel health sys­tem for the past two years.

Mitchell told the Busi­ness Guardian the pas­sage of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts Bill and the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts Bill had paved the way for the ho­tel to fi­nal­ly as­sume new man­age­ment. He was un­sure if the new man­agers of the ho­tel would have the 53-room fa­cil­i­ty ready for op­er­a­tion by Car­ni­val 2023. He was al­so ea­ger­ly await­ing the open­ing of the Radis­son Blu to fur­ther boost room stock in Trinidad.

The first half of the fis­cal year has been punc­tu­at­ed by the re­turn of in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines to our shores.

Dutch Air­line KLM re­sumed ser­vice to T&T in Oc­to­ber 2021, a few weeks af­ter the bud­get was read, end­ing its 20-year ab­sence from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Over at the ANR Robin­son Air­port, To­ba­go re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al flights for the first time since bor­ders were closed in March 2020 when British Air­ways touched down in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, quick­ly fol­lowed by the re­sump­tion of Vir­gin At­lantic flights from the Unit­ed King­dom.

Fifty mil­lion dol­lars had been al­lo­cat­ed in the bud­get to boost tourism on the is­land, and To­ba­go has grad­u­al­ly seen more in­ter­na­tion­al flights di­rect to its air­port, as it was re­cent­ly bol­stered by Caribbean Air­lines’ es­tab­lish­ment of di­rect flights from New York and Bar­ba­dos to To­ba­go.

De­spite the re­turn of the in­ter­na­tion­al tourist to the is­land, To­ba­go’s hote­liers wide­ly stat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty in the sec­tor had been slow but pro­gress­ing with East­er Week­end, the first with for­eign vis­i­tors as well as eased re­stric­tions since the pan­dem­ic be­ing a pos­i­tive land­mark for most with stake­hold­ers cau­tious­ly look­ing to an­oth­er po­ten­tial up­turn with the planned To­ba­go Car­ni­val in Oc­to­ber.

Trinidad ‘s hote­liers sim­i­lar­ly re­port­ed slow progress in terms of ac­tiv­i­ty, al­though sev­er­al small­er lo­ca­tions re­port­ed in­creased do­mes­tic busi­ness as stay­ca­tions con­tin­ued to be pop­u­lar in spite of the re-open­ing of the bor­der.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort Vin­od Ba­jaj told the Busi­ness Guardian that ho­tel en­joyed an ex­cel­lent East­er week­end and had moved past the neg­a­tive press it had re­ceived fol­low­ing the post­ing of a vi­ral video on so­cial me­dia plat­form Tik Tok which de­pict­ed di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions at the re­sort.

Ba­jaj said the ho­tel was look­ing for­ward to sev­er­al events in the com­ing months and con­firmed ne­go­ti­a­tions had been on­go­ing be­tween the ho­tel and Caribbean Air­lines con­cern­ing pack­age arrange­ments for trav­ellers.

How­ev­er weeks af­ter that con­ver­sa­tion, the re­sort was list­ed for sale via an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est on the Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies (eTecK) web­site.

The post called for ap­pli­ca­tions from any qual­i­fied in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tor, in­vestor and/or pur­chas­er for the re­sort. Three op­tions were of­fered in the EOI: the re­sort be­ing man­aged by an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed op­er­a­tor or a third-par­ty ho­tel man­age­ment op­er­a­tor, with the brand be­ing fran­chised; an in­vest­ment part­ner who will pro­vide cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and bring the nec­es­sary man­age­ment and brand­ing ex­per­tise or an out­right pur­chase of the en­tire re­sort.

The EOI’s dead­line was set for May 18.

Oth­er sig­nif­i­cant tourism projects list­ed in the 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in­clud­ed Tow­ers Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Group Ltd con­struct­ing a new ho­tel in To­ba­go, the Com­fort Inn and Suites, the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment of a 152-gue­stroom ho­tel un­der the Sher­a­ton Brand in the vicin­i­ty of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by Pres­tige Ho­tels Ltd and the com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion of a Mar­riott-brand­ed $500 mil­lion lux­u­ry ho­tel is be­ing con­struct­ed by Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Ltd at Rocky Point To­ba­go.

That fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be a joint-ven­ture be­tween Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels and eTeck will be com­mis­sioned in 2025.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out the Tourism Min­is­ter for an up­date on these and oth­er tourism projects, but did not get a re­sponse pri­or to pub­li­ca­tion.

In Im­bert’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so looked to the im­prove­ment and mod­erni­sa­tion of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al tourism lo­ca­tions.

One such which had been high­light­ed was the La Vigie Paramin Look­out, which opened in Feb­ru­ary and has re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal at­ten­tion since be­ing un­veiled.