Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to have an air pas­sage agree­ment be­tween Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) and Air In­dia in an ef­fort to im­prove tourism re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries. Tourism Min­is­ter Ru­pert Grif­fith made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a tourism fo­rum host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Min­istry of Tourism. Grif­fith said that the In­dia trav­ellers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a num­ber of dif­fi­cul­ties in try­ing trav­el to T&T, a ma­jor one be­ing the long and te­dious de­lay in ac­quir­ing a tran­sit visa to T&T. Grif­fith said it was prov­ing quite dif­fi­cult for the In­dia trav­ellers and that the Gov­ern­ment was en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions to help im­prove re­la­tion­ships be­tween the two coun­tries.

He said the In­dia tourist will no longer un­der­go such a te­dious task as the air pas­sage agree­ment is in its ad­vance stages and a draft is al­ready com­plet­ed.

The route from T&T to In­dia will in­clude three tran­sit points, but on­ly two Grif­fith could con­firm: Mi­a­mi and New York. This ini­tia­tive is part of a broad­er plan to nar­row the gap be­tween the two coun­tries, Grif­fith said. Af­ter un­der­tak­ing tourism pro­mo­tion­al mis­sions to In­dia in Jan­u­ary, Grif­fith said, the T&T del­e­ga­tion suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mot­ed the coun­try and, con­se­quent­ly, In­dia has ex­pressed great in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in a num­ber of ar­eas in T&T. He said the min­istry in­tends to build on the 8,000 In­di­an tourists who have vis­it­ed T&T be­tween 2005 and 2008. While these vis­i­tors have been pre­dom­i­nant­ly small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs, he said there was great po­ten­tial for widen­ing the scope and at­tract­ing oth­er seg­ments of the mar­ket name­ly, spa, health and well­ness (med­ical tourism).

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­search, busi­ness trav­el seg­ment, in­clu­sive of meet­ing in­cen­tives and con­ven­tions, is ex­pect­ed to be the biggest growth area for In­dia's grow­ing trade and in­vest­ment.

Grif­fith said the mis­sion was quite suc­cess­ful and there were a num­ber of plans in place to max­imise on the op­por­tu­ni­ties. These close re­la­tions, he added, will al­so seek to fos­ter good busi­ness and trade re­la­tions, while ap­ply­ing some of In­dia's bench­mark strate­gies to im­prove T&T's tourism prod­uct.

In­vest­ments

• In­dia is look­ing at ho­tel in­vest­ment, about 20 po­ten­tial leads have been iden­ti­fied.

• T&T pur­sued a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the State of Kar­nata­ka to ben­e­fit from train­ing ad tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer in the area of prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, eco-tourism and tourism pro­mo­tion

• In­di­an in­vestors ex­pressed in­ter­est in spa and well­ness cen­tres in T&T.

• The Tourism De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion will host one of the largest hos­pi­tals in In­dia, For­tis Hos­pi­tal, to dis­cuss med­ical tourism with a view to set­ting up fa­cil­i­ties as well a train­ing cen­tre in T&T.

• Apol­lo Hos­pi­tal, In­dia, is con­clud­ing dis­cus­sions with the Health Min­istry, TDC and oth­er health in­sti­tu­tions in sign­ing an agree­ment with a promi­nent pri­vate lo­cal med­ical in­sti­tu­tion in T&T.