Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The tourism sec­tor, which has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges since 2008, is hop­ing to achieve an in­creased mar­ket share of four per cent over the next three years. The cur­rent mar­ket share is less than two per cent. The Trinidad Ho­tels Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA) pre­sent­ed this man­date to the Gov­ern­ment as part of its bud­get pro­pos­al. THRTA said if a goal of four per cent mar­ket share is met, it would de­liv­er strong, hard cur­ren­cy earn­ings, ex­pand the busi­ness sec­tor and cre­ate high­er lev­els of em­ploy­ment. In the pro­pos­al, the THRTA, who has as its new pres­i­dent John Bell, said that based on 2011 fig­ures, T&T's tourism in­dus­try con­tributed an es­ti­mat­ed $5 bil­lion, with to­tal em­ploy­ment in ex­cess of 80,000 peo­ple, with di­rect em­ploy­ment ac­count­ing for an es­ti­mat­ed 33,000 peo­ple. "This is a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion when one con­sid­ers our coun­try cur­rent­ly at­tracts less than two per cent of long-stay re­gion­al vis­i­tors, who spend ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200 mil­lion."

How­ev­er, the to­tal rev­enue for ho­tel rooms for T&T is es­ti­mat­ed to end the year at $850 mil­lion, the THRTA stat­ed. In its pro­pos­al, the THRTA?said the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC) has failed to im­ple­ment an ef­fec­tive brand­ing cam­paign and has not prop­er­ly staffed the Vis­i­tor and Con­ven­tion Bu­reau; the key to stim­u­lat­ing traf­fic to T&T. The hos­pi­tal­i­ty body said most ho­tels in the Caribbean have up­grad­ed and im­proved their room stock, but T&T has not fol­lowed suit. "Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have no con­fi­dence in the lo­cal sec­tor be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has not demon­strat­ed a com­mit­ment to build a sus­tain­able tourism," read the THRTA?pro­pos­al. "Ex­e­cut­ing agen­cies, such as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and TDC, have not been pro­vid­ed with ad­e­quate re­sources to ef­fec­tive­ly mar­ket the des­ti­na­tion."

So­lu­tions

The THRTA said there are sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth.

They in­clude:

• T&T can at­tract a greater share of re­gion­al mar­ket by co-or­di­na­tion of ef­forts with im­ple­ment­ing agen­cies to en­sure a clear and con­sis­tent im­age is de­liv­ered.

• Es­tab­lish a mar­ket­ing fund us­ing the ho­tel tax rev­enue earned, which would di­rect­ly em­pow­er those work­ing in the in­dus­try. Mar­ket­ing ef­forts should be fo­cused where it is most need­ed.

• TDC should be giv­en an an­nu­al over­seas bud­get of US$50 mil­lion based on an ini­tial three-year plan.

• The Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide an in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to in­vest­ment in­cen­tives by de­vel­op­ing a tax-free tourism in­dus­try.

• Es­tab­lish the TDC fund, whose main ob­jec­tive is to in­ject cash eq­ui­ty in­to key projects

• Re­move visa re­quire­ments from all tar­get­ed mar­kets

• Re­form the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice to pro­vide ac­cu­rate ar­rival da­ta on a week­ly ba­sis

• Ex­tend the length of stay for vis­it­ing yacht own­ers to one year

• Fast for­ward the Com­pul­so­ry Li­cens­ing Pro­pos­al for Ac­com­mo­da­tion in T&T

• Im­prove the ser­vice lev­els for the tourism in­dus­try, a com­mit­ment could be giv­en for the next five years for the non-tax­able al­lowance to be raised to $65,000 for in­dus­try em­ploy­ees

• Fos­ter In­tra-Caribbean trav­el dur­ing the sum­mer months - Ju­ly and Au­gust. Pro­vide a seat sub­sidy for Caribbean Air­lines Ltd and Li­at dur­ing this pe­ri­od to al­low dis­count­ed air­fares to be passed on to the trav­el­ling pub­lic to boost ar­rivals

• Re­move the land li­cense re­quire­ment in To­ba­go.