The new­ly ap­point­ed board and se­nior man­agers of the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC) point­ed­ly chose Sat­ur­day morn­ing, at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion's suite at the Grand Stand in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah to com­mit to cre­at­ing what it de­scribed as "sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties" for tourism's stake­hold­ers. "We are plan­ning be­yond Car­ni­val," said TDC Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer San­dra Perkins, "Cul­ture is what makes a coun­try unique and our mul­ti-eth­nic and mul­ti-cul­tur­al com­po­si­tion is a ma­jor sell­ing point."

"We want Trinidad to be­come a house­hold name through­out the world." Such grand plans tend to ig­nore the fact that through the ef­fort of sig­nif­i­cant­ly tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als over the last few decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go has, from time to time, been a very vis­i­ble brand. The riv­et­ing re­al­i­ty show per­for­mance of Anya Ay­oung Chee on the very vis­i­ble se­ries Project Run­way is on­ly the most re­cent in a line of ac­com­plish­ments that have served to draw at­ten­tion to this coun­try.

When Dan­ny Kaye sang Lord Melody's 'Ma­ma look a boo boo dey' in a na­tion­al­ly tele­vised duet with Har­ry Be­la­fonte, ca­lyp­so was a craze in the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go was well-known as its home. Get­ting at­ten­tion for this coun­try has, gen­er­al­ly, nev­er been much of a prob­lem. Hold­ing that at­ten­tion with a sus­tained ef­fort at mak­ing clear to vis­i­tors what is so spe­cial, unique and tourist wor­thy about this coun­try has been the hur­dle on which al­most every ef­fort at cre­at­ing a re­al tourism in­dus­try has stum­bled. Ex­cept for Car­ni­val, which has earned in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion af­ter be­ing staged con­tin­u­ous­ly for a cen­tu­ry and a half, Trinidad and To­ba­go has done a poor job of ei­ther cre­at­ing or man­i­cur­ing the kind of at­trac­tions that con­sis­tent­ly draw vis­i­tors.

There's a good rea­son for that. Un­like Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos, which have done an ad­mirable job of craft­ing sus­tain­able tourism in­dus­tries, Trinidad and To­ba­go, blessed ear­ly with a strate­gic mar­ket ad­van­tage as a source of pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts just as the in­dus­tri­al age went main­stream, has nev­er re­al­ly need­ed to. A tourism in­dus­try is on­ly part in­fra­struc­ture, and the at­ti­tude and will of lo­cals to build and par­tic­i­pate in a ro­bust and on­go­ing vis­i­tor en­gage­ment process has tend­ed to pro­ceed in fits and starts, most­ly char­ac­terised by half-heart­ed ef­forts at hus­tling to, as they say, eat-ah-food.

Out­side of Car­ni­val, a sur­pris­ing per­cent­age of vis­i­tors to this coun­try, apart from those who ar­rive on cruise ships, are here on busi­ness or mix­ing work with plea­sure on an ex­tend­ed vis­it. Some of these vis­i­tors bring along their spous­es, ex­pect­ing an ad­ven­ture that they can share and find­ing lit­tle be­yond the ex­ist­ing lim­ing spots fre­quent­ed by lo­cals. in a tourism dri­ve and Ari­api­ta Av­enue re­al­ly doesn't com­pare with Bar­ba­dos' vis­i­tor-fo­cused St Lawrence Gap.

The suc­cess that we do have, de­rives from the au­then­tic­i­ty of en­ter­tain­ments that we make for our­selves. The next step is to lever­age this re­al­i­ty to our ad­van­tage. Every vis­i­tor ar­riv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go should be giv­en a de­fin­i­tive list­ing of what's hap­pen­ing in the coun­try for the next two weeks. Longer than that and events be­come ir­rel­e­vant, so let's call that T&T To­day. Every vis­i­tor leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go should be hold­ing a sim­i­lar doc­u­ment, point­ing out that this coun­try of­fers more than they ex­pe­ri­enced, high­light­ing up­com­ing sea­son­al events and en­ter­tain­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. Let's call that T&T: There's More.

The first acts as a roadmap to cur­rent op­por­tu­ni­ties, the sec­ond, a call to ac­tion for vis­i­tors con­sid­er­ing a re­turn vis­it or shar­ing in­for­ma­tion about their ex­pe­ri­ences. De­spite decades of in­dif­fer­ence to the tourism prod­uct, Trinidad and To­ba­go was de­clared both the World's Best Tourist Des­ti­na­tion and Favourite Cul­tur­al Des­ti­na­tion for 2012 by the Eu­ro­pean Union. That's strong tes­ti­mo­ny to the very re­al val­ue that this coun­try of­fers to vis­i­tors. Now we need to mount more di­rect to cus­tomer ini­tia­tives to at­tract more tourism and make sure that we're ready when they ar­rive.