Car­la Cu­pid-Jones

Guest Col­umn

A po­ten­tial vis­i­tor sees im­ages of Paramin: sprawl­ing hills, fields of herbs, views from La Vigie look­out and a ta­ble laid out for lunch. She adds it to her buck­et list.

Then come the ques­tions. How does she get there? Who can take her around? Can she meet the farm­ers or en­joy a meal? What does it cost? How does she book and pay?

If the an­swers are dif­fi­cult to find, she may choose an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence or an­oth­er coun­try.

That is where des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing meets its re­al test. We in­vest in mak­ing peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go. What hap­pens af­ter we have caught their in­ter­est de­serves equal at­ten­tion.

Af­ter more than two decades of work­ing in tourism re­search, des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing and pol­i­cy, I see dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty as a com­pet­i­tive­ness is­sue. An ex­pe­ri­ence must be find­able, un­der­stand­able and ac­ces­si­ble to some­one who has no lo­cal con­tacts. Oth­er­wise, the dis­tance be­tween in­ter­est and in­come re­mains un­nec­es­sar­i­ly wide.

Look­ing at our­selves

as a vis­i­tor would

In an ex­plorato­ry re­view, 120 tourism ex­pe­ri­ences were ex­am­ined across Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, Trinidad and To­ba­go. Each is­land was as­sessed sep­a­rate­ly, with 20 ex­pe­ri­ences cov­er­ing na­ture, beach­es, her­itage, food and ad­ven­ture.

Match­ing tour or prod­uct list­ings were found for 19 of 20 ex­pe­ri­ences in both Ja­maica and St Lu­cia, rep­re­sent­ing 95 per cent of each sam­ple. Bar­ba­dos record­ed 90 per cent, Grena­da 80 per cent, Trinidad 65 per cent and To­ba­go 60 per cent.

These were se­lect­ed sam­ples, not a for­mal des­ti­na­tion rank­ing or an AI-readi­ness as­sess­ment. List­ings some­times in­clud­ed an ex­pe­ri­ence with­in a larg­er tour, and com­plet­ed book­ings were not test­ed. Pub­lic beach­es do not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quire book­ing sys­tems.

Nev­er­the­less, the gap mat­ters. It sug­gests that more of our sam­pled ex­pe­ri­ences lacked an iden­ti­fi­able tour or prod­uct list­ing con­nect­ing dis­cov­ery to a prac­ti­cal next step.

There are foun­da­tions to build on. Four­teen of Trinidad’s sam­pled ex­pe­ri­ences had read­able, ded­i­cat­ed pages on the of­fi­cial des­ti­na­tion web­site. Nine To­ba­go des­ti­na­tion pages could not be ful­ly read dur­ing the re­view and can­not fair­ly be count­ed as ab­sent.

The re­view al­so found an op­er­a­tor ex­plain­ing the need for ad­vance reser­va­tions, while its reser­va­tion page showed noth­ing avail­able to book, and an es­tate-tour page dis­play­ing con­flict­ing min­i­mum-spend amounts. Nei­ther proves that an ex­pe­ri­ence was un­avail­able. Both cre­ate un­cer­tain­ty at the point when a vis­i­tor needs con­fi­dence to move for­ward.

The book­ings we

nev­er hear about

Do­mes­ti­cal­ly, we know the scar­let ibis at Ca­roni, the birdlife at Asa Wright, our co­coa es­tates and re­li­gious her­itage. We know To­ba­go’s reefs, Main Ridge and Cas­tara. Many of us al­so know some­one who can arrange a vis­it.

A trav­eller over­seas has Wi-Fi, a screen and ques­tions.

A beau­ti­ful­ly edit­ed reel may in­spire them, but it can­not car­ry the en­tire vis­i­tor jour­ney. They still need in­for­ma­tion on du­ra­tion, lo­ca­tion, price and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, as well as a clear route to en­quire or book. A tele­phone num­ber buried in an old post adds fric­tion. Con­flict­ing busi­ness names or out­dat­ed open­ing hours weak­en con­fi­dence.

When those an­swers are miss­ing, the op­er­a­tor may nev­er re­ceive a com­plaint or see an aban­doned reser­va­tion. The trav­eller sim­ply shifts their at­ten­tion and books some­thing else.

This is why reach and en­gage­ment are in­suf­fi­cient mea­sures of tourism mar­ket­ing suc­cess. We must al­so ask whether at­ten­tion leads to qual­i­fied en­quiries, reser­va­tions and spend­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, there­by gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic im­pact.

AI makes these weak­ness­es more con­se­quen­tial

Adobe re­port­ed that traf­fic from AI tools to US trav­el web­sites in­creased by 119 per cent year-on-year in Ju­ly 2026. Mean­while, Ex­pe­dia Group’s 2026 re­search, which sur­veyed more than 5,700 adults in the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom and In­dia, found that 40 per cent used AI to help build itin­er­aries, while 68 per cent pre­ferred book­ing with a trust­ed trav­el brand over an AI chat­bot or agent.

These are in­ter­na­tion­al find­ings, not mea­sures of vis­i­tor be­hav­iour in Trinidad and To­ba­go. They nev­er­the­less re­veal a shift we can­not ig­nore: AI can in­flu­ence the short­list be­fore a vis­i­tor reach­es the book­ing plat­form.

Some­one can now ask for three days of food and cul­ture in Trinidad, or a fam­i­ly itin­er­ary in To­ba­go. Our ex­pe­ri­ences need re­li­able on­line in­for­ma­tion that these sys­tems can ac­cess and in­ter­pret.

Use­ful de­tails can­not ex­ist on­ly in­side a poster or video. Names, lo­ca­tions, open­ing hours, tour in­clu­sions and book­ing in­struc­tions need to be pre­sent­ed in clear text, with con­sis­tent list­ings and, where ap­pro­pri­ate, struc­tured web­site da­ta that la­bels those facts for ma­chines.

How­ev­er, this does not guar­an­tee an AI rec­om­men­da­tion. Sys­tems can over­look busi­ness­es and pro­duce in­ac­cu­rate an­swers. But frag­ment­ed or con­tra­dic­to­ry in­for­ma­tion leaves us poor­ly po­si­tioned to com­pete as AI be­comes an­oth­er gate­way to trav­el dis­cov­ery.

The bot­tom line is that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared wher­ev­er these ba­sic con­nec­tions re­main bro­ken. Buy­ing an AI tool will not re­solve miss­ing prod­uct in­for­ma­tion or un­clear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for keep­ing it cur­rent.

Readi­ness re­quires own­er­ship

The re­sponse must ex­tend be­yond ask­ing small op­er­a­tors to post more on so­cial me­dia.

Des­ti­na­tion or­gan­i­sa­tions should co­or­di­nate a ver­i­fied in­ven­to­ry of tourism ex­pe­ri­ences, with com­mon in­for­ma­tion stan­dards, clear­ly as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for up­dates and di­rect links to op­er­a­tors. Busi­ness­es need prac­ti­cal sup­port to main­tain ac­cu­rate list­ings and work­able sys­tems for en­quiries, reser­va­tions and pay­ments.

When an at­trac­tion changes its hours, who up­dates the des­ti­na­tion web­site, Google list­ing, tour plat­form and events cal­en­dar? How quick­ly? Who checks that the cor­rec­tion reach­es them?

These are ques­tions about tourism gov­er­nance. A vis­i­tor ar­riv­ing at a closed gate ex­pe­ri­ences the fail­ure di­rect­ly, re­gard­less of which or­gan­i­sa­tion is sup­posed to up­date the in­for­ma­tion.

The rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, to­geth­er with stake­hold­ers, should mea­sure how many ex­pe­ri­ences have ver­i­fied de­tails, clear book­ing routes and time­ly re­spons­es. They should then track en­quiries and reser­va­tions along­side cam­paign reach. That would show where in­vest­ment can re­move bar­ri­ers to vis­i­tor spend­ing.

Roads, air­ports and ac­com­mo­da­tion are im­por­tant el­e­ments of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture. So, too, is the tech­no­log­i­cal and in­for­ma­tion in­fra­struc­ture that helps vis­i­tors find and make use of them.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has com­pelling sto­ries. Our chal­lenge is to make those sto­ries lead some­where: to an ex­pe­ri­ence a vis­i­tor can un­der­stand, trust, ac­cess and arrange.

A breath­tak­ing im­age of La Vigie can make Paramin de­sir­able. Re­li­able in­for­ma­tion makes the vis­it pos­si­ble. In the age of AI, be­ing well pro­mot­ed must not be con­fused with be­ing pre­pared.

Car­la Cu­pid-Jones is a tourism strate­gist, re­searcher, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­al with over 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence who pre­vi­ous­ly served as the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed and as Se­nior Tech­ni­cal Ad­vis­er to the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts. She cur­rent­ly leads Car­la Cu­pid Jones Con­sult­ing.