The Miss World Pageant will not be staged in Tobago this year, according to the official pageant Web site Miss World.com yesterday. The decision was taken following a site visit to Tobago by a Miss World Limited team, headed by CEO Julia Morley, who said the infrastructure to stage the event in the island would not be ready in time. However, she held out the possibility that the international beauty pageant may be held on the island next year.
On Wednesday, Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Orville London indicated Tobago did not have the infrastructure to host the pageant. He said Tobago had between 1,000 and 1,500 "A" class rooms and 2,000 to 3,000 other rooms. "So when you are talking about one-off events and the impact on Tobago you have to understand that those events can only impact in that scenario where you can only fill 'X' number of rooms," he said. He added: "So even in relationship to the kind of activity, you have got to understand that you can have an activity in Tobago that is in fact too big really for the Tobago tourism market at this point in time.
"That is why Tobago tends to focus on events that are not massive. They bring in a lot of people by Tobago standards but it is not mass events because we just simply don't have the infrastructure."
London said there were concerns, not only about the number, but the quality of the infrastructure.
He recalled that when discussions about staging the pageant in Tobago came up initially, concerns were expressed by hoteliers that there had to be an upgrade of the hotel plant.
"That is where the big money will come in because the hoteliers are saying it would take between $200 million to $300 million to really bring the properties up to a level that you can really market a Miss World Pageant," he said. "My position remains the same. I have seen nothing in any proposal coming from the ministry that will give me any comfort or give me any confidence to go ahead with this proposal which to me has not yet been made." he added.
It was that it would have cost at least $54.2 million for Tobago to stage the pageant in December. Of this sum, the THA would have had to fork out $22 million, while the Ministry of Tobago Development's contribution would have been $32.2 million. The ministry's current parliamentary allocation is $29 million for its recurrent expenditure and development programmes.