Pe­ter O’Con­nor

Over the past few days, I have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Face­book dis­cus­sion about what we call tourism in T&T, al­though we are ap­par­ent­ly no longer one twin-is­land coun­try. This ac­cord­ing to in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly gov­ern­ing us. But we can­not blame on­ly the cur­rent in­di­vid­u­als for the fact that we have no plans or phi­los­o­phy re­gard­ing what is a mean­ing­ful in­dus­try in so many coun­tries.

We have nev­er ac­cept­ed tourism as a source of em­ploy­ment and in­come which al­so dri­ves a sense of na­tion­al pride in so many coun­tries, from the largest to the small­est. It was nev­er some­thing we need­ed or want­ed. In­deed, the head­ing “Tourism” nev­er ap­peared in any na­tion­al bud­get un­til the mid-1980s, af­ter our econ­o­my col­lapsed in­to chaos be­cause of our waste, cor­rup­tion, and falling oil prices.

In our un­in­formed heads, we had one tourist at­trac­tion, and that was Car­ni­val. There was on­ly one oth­er tourism sec­tor we could con­ceive, and that was what tourism-de­pen­dent is­lands sold to North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope: Sun, Sand, and Sea. And please do not think I am be­ing scorn­ful of these as­sets—they are beau­ti­ful, at­tract mil­lions of vis­i­tors, and I wrote this from one such as­set-blessed and sen­si­bly ex­ploit­ed Caribbean coun­try—Saint Kitts and Nevis.

We are not aware that ex­cept for a cou­ple of beach­es in To­ba­go, and pos­si­bly one in Trinidad that we have now de­stroyed, we do not have these as­sets. But this should not be a hand­i­cap, be­cause we have so much more to at­tract the hun­dreds of thou­sands of trav­ellers who seek ex­pe­ri­ences be­yond ly­ing on white sand beach­es drink­ing daiquiris made with Puer­to Ri­can rums. We are so locked in­to this Sand, Sea, and Daiquiri im­age that we can­not em­brace the at­trac­tions with which we are blessed.

Please try to ac­cept that Trinidad es­pe­cial­ly, To­ba­go less so, will nev­er be a sun, sand, and sea des­ti­na­tion, no mat­ter how des­per­ate­ly we are com­mit­ted to be­com­ing one. For starters, Trinidad is not a “Caribbean is­land”. It is, in re­al­i­ty, an is­land in South Amer­i­ca, washed by the Orinoco and the great rivers of the Guyanas and even the Ama­zon. Our ge­og­ra­phy, ge­ol­o­gy, flo­ra, and fau­na are trop­i­cal South Amer­i­can. But our peo­ple see our forests, wet­lands, re­mote beach­es, rivers, and wa­ter­falls as “bush and swamps” bet­ter to be cleared for malls and high-rise con­do­mini­ums.

Most of us are un­aware that the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre is known around the world. While the “sand and sea” ho­tels in To­ba­go are emp­ty, Asa Wright hosts over twelve hun­dred overnight vis­i­tors per year, most stay­ing an av­er­age of three to four nights. And about 75 per cent of these in­clude To­ba­go in their vis­it itin­er­ary, stay­ing at small but gen­uine Na­ture Ho­tels there, and vis­it­ing the Main Ridge For­est Re­serve (an UN­ESCO Her­itage Site and the old­est Na­ture Re­serve in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, but what does that mean to us?). Our forests, wet­lands, flo­ra, and fau­na bring a con­stant stream of vis­i­tors to our is­lands, but they avoid Port-of-Spain, Mara­cas Bay and Crown Point.

Tourism is “de­vel­oped” by hav­ing gen­uine rea­sons for vis­i­tors to want to come to an area, not by con­struct­ing bil­lion-dol­lar Gu­lags for for­eign en­ti­ties to op­er­ate to the ex­clu­sion of lo­cals. It ap­pears that the peo­ple of Cas­tara have qui­et­ly been de­vel­op­ing a gen­uine lo­cal hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try with­out the blight­ing hand of gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence. What is the po­ten­tial of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary be­hav­iour? Read the his­to­ries of Can­cun and Puer­to Val­lar­ta in Mex­i­co, not that Cas­tara should grow to those heights (hope­ful­ly?).

But be­yond all this na­ture be­stowed boun­ty we pos­sess at­trac­tions so un­der-ex­ploit­ed that we re­main un­con­scious to their in­creas­ing ap­peal to po­ten­tial vis­i­tors. “Get­away” tourism is a rapid­ly grow­ing at­trac­tion to the mod­ern trav­el­ling tourist, as the ar­ti­fi­cial­i­ty and al­leged ex­clu­siv­i­ty of the all-in­clu­sive, en­closed plas­tic re­sort be­comes in­creas­ing­ly bor­ing. We have cul­tur­al, sport­ing and re­li­gious events which could be mar­ket­ed. Why not in­vite the grow­ing East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion in the USA and Cana­da to vis­it for crick­et, Phag­wa, Di­vali and Eid al-Fitr? With all our new sports fa­cil­i­ties, why have we not sought to host ma­jor ath­let­ic meets, or in­vite peo­ple here for train­ing in their win­ter months? We ac­tu­al­ly dri­ve events away!

But all of these op­por­tu­ni­ties fade in the face of our ap­palling gov­er­nance, and the un­nec­es­sary prob­lems we cit­i­zens suf­fer, and which re­strain our mar­ketabil­i­ty. Prob­lems of se­cu­ri­ty, wa­ter sup­ply, health care, and the ho­tel room tax. The Gov­ern­ment must fix the first three for us, and that will com­fort the tourism mar­ket, and the re­moval of the puni­tive room tax will make our ho­tels more com­pet­i­tive and the in­creased vis­i­tors will more than cov­er the short­fall.

Our dilem­ma is that we refuse to even ac­knowl­edge what we tru­ly have to share!