DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

While strug­gling to sur­vive, To­ba­go con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence a de­cline in its tourist ar­rivals. The high­est num­ber of ar­rivals be­tween 2007 to 2010 was in 2008, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Re­search Unit of the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. The fig­ure rose from 840,698 in 2007 to 1,089,211 in 2008. The fig­ures fell right back down to 881,011 in 2009 and, up to Sep­tem­ber 2010, the to­tal num­ber of ar­rivals so far was 684,915. A num­ber of fac­tors may has been re­spon­si­ble for this de­cline: the most re­cent be­ing the new air pas­sen­ger du­ty tax im­ple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment from 20 to 75 pounds per per­son. The fig­ures be­gan dwin­dling since the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, which im­pact­ed on de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

To­ba­go not alone

Some of the Caribbean coun­tries have been suf­fer­ing a sim­i­lar fate as To­ba­go re­gard­ing tourist ar­rivals. A re­port by the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) stat­ed that To­ba­go, along with oth­er coun­tries that are de­pen­dent on the UK mar­ket, had suf­fered more than those that have tourists com­ing from the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing to the CTO, 16 out of the 24 Caribbean coun­tries whose tourist ar­rivals are de­pen­dent on the UK mar­ket have showed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in their ar­rivals for the first half of 2010. Of those coun­tries are de­pen­dent on the US mar­ket, on­ly six showed a de­cline. The re­port stat­ed that is­lands served by US car­ri­ers are do­ing much bet­ter. The CTO da­ta showed there was a 20.7 per cent de­cline in tourist ar­rivals for the months of Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary from the UK car­ri­ers to To­ba­go. There were 10,433 pas­sen­gers from the UK car­ri­ers while 32,224 pas­sen­gers came from the US mar­ket, which on­ly de­clined by 5.2 per cent. Be­tween Jan­u­ary to March, Can­cun and Mex­i­co went down by 30.2 per cent, An­tigua by 18.2 per cent, while Do­mini­ca de­clined by 14.9 per cent. Fol­low­ing Montser­rat with a 13.2 per cent de­cline and Bar­ba­dos fell by 11 per cent. Grena­da de­clined by on­ly 9 per cent. All de­clines were from the UK mar­ket.

The crime fac­tor

Crime has been con­sid­ered a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the de­cline of tourist ar­rivals in To­ba­go. In Oc­to­ber 2008, a Swedish cou­ple was chopped to death in their ho­tel room in To­ba­go. Just ten days lat­er in To­ba­go, two British women were robbed and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed by a ban­dit who forced his way in­to their hol­i­day apart­ment. These crimes re­ceived a lot of at­ten­tion world wide, so much so that trav­el ad­vi­so­ry warn­ings were is­sued from the UK For­eign and Com­mon­wealth of­fice and the Unit­ed States ad­vis­ing trav­ellers about in­creas­ing vi­o­lence and the fail­ure of po­lice in To­ba­go to ap­pre­hend and pros­e­cute crim­i­nals. The re­search unit al­so re­vealed the num­ber of crimes com­mit­ted against tourists be­tween the 2005 to 2008, pend­ing 2009/2010 da­ta.

The num­bers have been fluc­tu­at­ing, with the high­est fig­ure in 2007.

�2 In 2005: 116 crimes com­mit­ted; two solved

�2 2006: 193 of­fences; 16 were solved

�2 2007: 258 of­fences; 18 were solved

�2 2008: 95 of­fences; 18 solved.

It was not­ed that the ma­jor crimes were lar­ce­ny and rob­beries.

Air­line in­dus­try

A num­ber of car­ri­ers, main­ly the UK air­lines, in­clud­ing British Air­ways, Vir­gin At­lantic, Ex­cel and Monarch, are among the car­ri­ers that have the high­est num­ber of pas­sen­ger loads com­ing to To­ba­go.

Tourist ar­rivals by air­lines saw a steady de­cline from 2007 to 2010.

To­tal num­ber of ar­rivals by all car­ri­ers ser­vic­ing To­ba­go in 2007 was 66,266 in 2008. The fig­ure dropped to 56,179 and a fur­ther de­cline of 38,321 in 2009. So far for 2010, the num­ber is at 19,862.

Ex­cel, a char­ter to the UK mar­ket, had the high­est pas­sen­ger load in 2007 with a fig­ure of 19,218, but dropped in 2008 to 12,737 and, by 2009, fell off the radar com­plete­ly. Sec­ond in line was Vir­gin At­lantic with 13,168 pas­sen­gers in 2007, that fell to 11,123 in 2008 and a fur­ther de­cline of 9,034 pas­sen­gers in 2009. In 2010, that num­ber dropped by 3,596 pas­sen­gers. Fol­low­ing was British Air­ways, with a pas­sen­ger load of 12,647 in 2007, which dropped a bit to 12,137 and, in 2009, fell to 10,199. For this year, it took a nose­dive to 4,237.

Main mar­ket ar­rivals

With­in Eu­rope, the largest num­ber of tourists ar­riv­ing in To­ba­go come from Ger­many. Even though the Busi­ness Guardian has been chal­lenged in re­ceiv­ing re­cent da­ta re­gards to the main ar­rivals, in 2006, there were 5,029 Ger­mans vis­it­ing To­ba­go, but that fig­ure dropped to 3,804 in 2007. This fig­ure was fol­lowed by the US mar­ket with 1,970 in 2006. This al­so de­cline in 2007 to 1,004. Cana­da has a small num­ber of 435 pas­sen­gers in 2007; this mar­ket de­clined to 310. The Asian mar­ket seems to be pick­ing up in To­ba­go; from 63 Chi­nese in 2006 to about 303 in 2007. This may have been at­trib­uted to the hype in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. With­in the Caribbean, though, da­ta al­so showed Bar­ba­dos hav­ing the high­est num­ber of vis­i­tors com­ing to To­ba­go, fol­lowed by Grena­da and Guyana.

Pop­u­lar mar­kets

Just be­fore the ma­jor de­cline of tourist ar­rivals in To­ba­go, a 2008 sta­tis­ti­cal re­port by the re­search unit showed that 40,291 vis­i­tors came main­ly for leisure. The sec­ond pop­u­lar mar­ket was the do­mes­tic sec­tor with a fig­ure of 5,233 T&T na­tion­als. Out of that, 3,650 vis­it­ed friends and fam­i­ly while 1,087 came for busi­ness and to at­tend con­ven­tions. Wed­dings seem to be a grow­ing and thriv­ing sec­tor in To­ba­go. Eight hun­dred and fifty-nine wed­dings were held in the is­land in 2008. This num­ber grew from 272 wed­dings in 2007, 349 in 2006, 393 in 2005, 334 in 2004 and 335 in 2003. An­oth­er grow­ing sec­tor is the eco-tourism mar­ket, which had 114 tourists in 2008, while 199 came for scu­ba div­ing. Sur­pris­ing­ly, on­ly 92 record­ed for Car­ni­val, 102 for study, 845 not stat­ed and 1,778 for oth­er in­ter­ests.

Tourists num­bers flat

Due to lim­it­ed da­ta, the Busi­ness Guardian sought to get an idea on the cur­rent sta­tus of tourist ar­rivals in To­ba­go. It was in­formed by sources with­in the trav­el in­dus­try that all air­lines seem to be per­form­ing poor­ly. The sources said that that dai­ly pas­sen­ger loads are very poor, even from the UK car­ri­ers, like British Air­ways and Monarch, which usu­al­ly per­form very well. One source in­di­cat­ed that Con­dor car­ries a pas­sen­ger load be­tween 50 to 80, which is low­est they have re­ceived in a while. The source said the car­ri­er, on av­er­age, would have about 150 pas­sen­gers. Con­dor flies once week­ly. The source not­ed with con­cern that this was the worse they have seen in years. Monarch, which al­so flies once per week, is do­ing a lit­tle bet­ter than British Air­ways (BA).

BA, the source said, on­ly picked up about 40 pas­sen­gers out of 280.

"This is the low­est. Every­thing has gone flat," an­oth­er source not­ed.

Even from the Caribbean is­lands, pas­sen­ger loads have fall­en. Tourist ar­rivals from Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua have very poor loads and the low­est since the UK air­line tax has been im­ple­ment­ed, this source in­di­cat­ed. Last year around this same time, the source said it was very busy. The air­lines were do­ing much bet­ter. Com­ing out of Lon­don, the load cur­rent­ly is around 80 pas­sen­gers, but it is usu­al­ly be­tween 80 and 170. The source said Li­at seemed to be hav­ing a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. The car­ri­er's dai­ly flights are very low. It car­ries about 10/11 pas­sen­gers out of 50, but the source added that some­times it's as bad as none.