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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Hotelier calls for more marketing of T&T

by

20140629

T&T's rich cul­ture and beau­ti­ful land­scape makes it an at­trac­tive tourist des­ti­na­tion but pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Has­sel Thom, says Gov­ern­ment needs to do more to mar­ket the coun­try.Since the bulk of tourism dol­lars are de­rived from the Car­ni­val sea­son, most ho­tels ex­pe­ri­ence a drought dur­ing the off-peak sea­son, Thom said.

"Ho­tels suf­fer sim­ply be­cause a lot more needs to be done by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the des­ti­na­tion is mar­ket­ed. Mar­ket­ing the des­ti­na­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of any pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion or any com­pa­ny, it's just not fea­si­ble," he told the T&T Guardian..

In an in­ter­view fol­low­ing Cara Suite's Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre's em­ploy­ee awards at Clax­ton Bay, Thom, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the ho­tel, said be­side the var­i­ous em­bassies, there are peo­ple con­tract­ed to pro­mote T&T in Asia, USA and Eu­rope but sev­er­al stum­bling blocks hin­der­ing this process need to be dealt with.

Thom said crime and trav­el ad­vi­sories from the US and UKs have caused a re­luc­tance on the park of po­ten­tial vis­i­tors. It is nec­es­sary to ad­dress these set­backs, he said , be­cause tourism can ri­val oil and gas rev­enues and con­tribute to T&T's Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct."Out­side of oil and gas, tourism is the strongest for­eign ex­change earn­er be­cause we op­er­ate in US dol­lars. Once T&T gets on the map in terms of a Caribbean per­spec­tive, T&T has one of the most com­plex prod­uct.

"If it is mar­ket­ed strate­gi­cal­ly and cre­ative­ly, the on­ly is­land in the Caribbean that can ri­val T&T is Ja­maica. How­ev­er, when it comes to cul­ture and culi­nary, T&T is un­ri­valed. Peo­ple just do not know about it, but it is un­ri­valed," he said. "I think slow­ly but sure­ly, we are go­ing to start re­al­is­ing that oil can on­ly do so much for your GDP. Yes it brings in a high rev­enue. How­ev­er, when you look at em­ploy­ment, the en­er­gy sec­tor on­ly em­ploys five per cent of our em­ploy­able pop­u­la­tion.

Tourism em­ploys 15 per cent di­rect­ly and di­rect­ly means that peo­ple are work­ing in the in­dus­try, in the prop­er­ties, restau­rants and in all of the ser­vice sec­tors. We haven't even start­ed to talk about the taxi dri­vers, the farm­ers and the fish­er­men who help this in­dus­try go for­ward."

Thom said Cara Suites have been able to with­stand the sea­son­al tourism drought be­cause it is strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed be­tween the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and Petrotrin's Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. He said the ho­tel's main clien­tele are busi­ness­men and ex­pa­tri­ates and they al­so cater for sem­i­nars host­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­nies.He said that al­though the en­er­gy sec­tor op­er­ates year-round, when­ev­er Point Lisas goes qui­et, they al­so feel the pinch.

Thom said is now seek­ing to at­tract more fam­i­lies and sport­ing groups. He said ho­tels in north Trinidad are be­ing booked on week­ends by lo­cals, but for peo­ple who want to get out of the hus­tle and bus­tle of Port-of-Spain, Cara Suites, which over­looks the Gulf of Paria, is an ide­al lo­ca­tion.


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