Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Louan­na Chai, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA), says the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency will have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on vis­i­tor per­cep­tion of T&T at this time.

While some busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions felt that this course of ac­tion may not be detri­men­tal to the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age, THRTA said it may im­pact the tourism in­dus­try. Chai said it hopes that the ob­jec­tives out­lined by the Gov­ern­ment in de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency are quick­ly achieved and the coun­try can re­turn to nor­mal. Agree­ing that crime is a se­ri­ous con­cern to all and must be ad­dressed, Chai said the THRTA hopes this dras­tic ac­tion would yield re­sults.

The in­dus­try, al­ready been strug­gling to in­crease its de­mand from its var­i­ous mar­kets, ex­pe­ri­enced very slow growth be­tween 2010 and 2011. One of THRTA's plans is to open T&T to more and new in­vestors, but it hopes the state of emer­gency does not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact on po­ten­tial in­vest­ments. On Au­gust 22, the Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial­ly de­clared a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in cer­tain hot spots, in­clud­ing ar­eas in the cities of Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, the Bor­oughs of Ari­ma and Ch­agua­nas, the San Juan/Laven­tille and Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions. Cur­few hours are from 9 pm to 5 am. The state of emer­gency is for an ini­tial pe­ri­od of 15 days. Chai said ho­tels have re­port­ed some can­cel­la­tion of reser­va­tions and a few events have been post­poned.

Amer­i­can Air­lines, she ex­plained, can­celled two flights on Mon­day be­cause of the un­cer­tain­ty that their pas­sen­gers may not be fa­cil­i­tat­ed in get­ting to and from their flights on time. "But we are grate­ful that to­day no ad­di­tion­al flights have been can­celled." She said the ma­jor im­pact for the THRTA's mem­bers has been to read­just their work sched­ules and op­er­a­tional hours. Chai said, though, that ho­tels must con­tin­ue to op­er­ate and ser­vice their guests 24/7, but many have had to arrange to have their staff work overnight at the ho­tels to en­sure their op­er­a­tions are ef­fi­cient. Restau­rants and en­ter­tain­ment out­lets are al­so fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant loss­es as their op­er­a­tional hours have been re­duced to al­low their staff to reach home be­fore the 9 pm cur­few. Food and drink sup­pli­ers and oth­er sup­port ser­vices that usu­al­ly run mul­ti­ple shifts have had to re­struc­ture their shifts to al­low their em­ploy­ees to ac­cess their work­place, Chai said.