Geisha Kow­lessar

Two ma­jor con­fer­ences will be held in Trinidad and To­ba­go which are ex­pect­ed to lift the tourism bar and gen­er­ate fur­ther em­ploy­ment. The events, the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) con­fer­ence on Sus­tain­able Tourism De­vel­op­ment and the 11th Trav­el Pro­fes­sion­als of Colour (TPOC), are ex­pect­ed to take place next Au­gust. This was an­nounced by Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz yes­ter­day dur­ing a press brief­ing at the min­istry's of­fice at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain. A bud­get of US $250,000 has been set for each event but Cadiz is hop­ing that spon­sor­ship will off­set the ma­jor­i­ty of ex­pens­es. He said: "Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ue to sell it­self as a des­ti­na­tion for meet­ings. We have had sev­er­al meet­ings, for in­stance the en­er­gy meet­ing is in Feb­ru­ary each year and that at­tracts a fair amount of vis­i­tors. "What bet­ter at­trac­tion than trav­el agents who would then go back home and sing the prais­es of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a place of des­ti­na­tion," Cadiz added.

Say­ing the meet­ings had raised the coun­try's pro­file as "a" place to do busi­ness the min­is­ter said they had al­so in­crease the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tract more tourists." He added: "It's a bet­ter chance we have of bring­ing in the 23 mil­lion peo­ple that vis­it the Caribbean each year... that's a 2011 fig­ure. "Right now what we get out of that fig­ure is a small per­cent­age of that and it is our in­ten­tion over the next year or so to en­sure that we can go af­ter a lot more of that mar­ket so these two con­fer­ence will add a lot of val­ue."

Ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fits would in­clude a boost in ho­tel rev­enue, in­come from tours and in­creased tick­et sales from Caribbean Air­lines, which has been named as the of­fi­cial car­ri­er, Cadiz said. He said: "Tourism is a very unique in­dus­try and every dol­lar spent in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness finds its way in­to the econ­o­my and we start sup­port­ing from taxi dri­vers to peo­ple who work in the air­port...the tourism dol­lar touch­es every per­son and there­fore it is a key part of the econ­o­my and we would be do­ing every­thing to raise the pro­file of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a pre­mier des­ti­na­tion."

He said 80 per cent of the ar­rivals in Trinidad catered to the Amer­i­can mar­ket and to a less­er ex­tent To­ba­go. But in­creased ar­rivals to the Caribbean would equate greater ben­e­fits to all is­lands, he said. He added: "We need to find ways and means of ex­pand­ing that and grow­ing that pro­file. Part of the ben­e­fit of the CTO con­fer­ence is for the Caribbean to work to­geth­er and a suc­cess­ful Caribbean econ­o­my means bet­ter busi­ness for Trinidad and To­ba­go. "If we start sell­ing our­selves as a Caribbean prod­uct whether or not that trav­eller goes to Trinidad and To­ba­go or to an­oth­er is­land for in­stance means the Caribbean ben­e­fits great­ly from it. So all of us, if we work to­geth­er, would ben­e­fit." TPOC's pres­i­dent Char­lotte Hay­more, who has been tour­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go for the last three days, said there were a num­ber of in­ter­est­ing sites which the or­gan­i­sa­tion were con­sid­er­ing to mar­ket to clients. Among these was Paramin where TPOC mem­bers were treat­ed to parang. TPOC mem­bers are al­so ex­pect­ed to ob­serve to­mor­row's Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions.