Ob­vi­ous­ly, To­ba­go ho­tel own­ers may al­leged­ly fear the ef­fect of the San­dals fran­chise. Let us talk. Let us all not be small mind­ed. Read my lips. The time has come to ad­mit that the ho­tels in To­ba­go can­not sup­port the nec­es­sary eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties need­ed to bol­ster the tourism in­dus­try.

When do we ac­knowl­edge that we can­not com­pare to Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, An­tigua, St Vin­cent, St Lu­cia, The Vir­gin Is­lands, the Ba­hamas, for at­tract­ing the tru­ly wealthy vis­i­tor ar­rivals on a year-round ba­sis?

To­ba­go is ex­cep­tion­al­ly beau­ti­ful, clean, green, and serene. The sun, sand, and the sea come with the ter­ri­to­ry. The dif­fer­ence with the above des­ti­na­tions is that they have many more first-class rooms.

In or­der to make mon­ey, do you men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly walk or do you fly in­to eco­nom­ic par­adise?

The col­lapse of the seabridge did not cause To­ba­go to lose bil­lions of dol­lars. Some few mil­lion, yes, but the claims of bil­lions of loss­es to small busi­ness? No. Bring the ev­i­dence of pre­vi­ous bills from over the years.

We con­tin­ue to be­lieve that be­ing beau­ti­ful is enough to be prof­itable. Any mod­ern woman can tell you that if you have enough mon­ey and the cor­rect store/plas­tic sur­geon or di­et, you can buy beau­ty over the counter.

The plus­es out­weigh the mi­nus­es for ac­cept­ing San­dals as the beau­ti­fy­ing change agent for To­ba­go.

Think big. Think mod­ern. Think five-star ac­com­mo­da­tion and 750-1,000 rooms, and the truth will set us all free.

Lynette Joseph

Diego Mar­tin.