Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Cruise ship ar­rivals in To­ba­go have dropped con­sid­er­ably over the last two years, with just 32 calls made in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 2025/2026 sea­son.

In a me­dia re­lease on April 30, the Di­vi­sion of Tourism re­viewed the sea­son not­ing there were 37,753 pas­sen­ger ar­rivals, with the ma­jor­i­ty of them—37,086—en­ter­ing via the Scar­bor­ough Port.

The di­vi­sion said 10,868 vis­i­tors went on tours with the pop­u­lar be­ing trips to Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park (3,753), Buc­coo Reef (2,070) and the South Tour (1,776).

The Marel­la Ex­plor­er, which iron­i­cal­ly made the last call for the sea­son on April 10, was the most fre­quent ves­sel with ten calls to the is­land.

How­ev­er, tourism stake­hold­ers are con­cerned that the tourism num­bers are trend­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion.

In 2024/2025, there were 41 calls to the is­land and 51,069 vis­i­tors, while the pre­ced­ing year saw a whop­ping 64 calls and 102,512 vis­i­tors.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Regi­nald MacLean, blamed the in­ad­e­quate mar­ket­ing of the is­land for the drop in vis­i­tors.

He said the $50 mil­lion set aside is not suf­fi­cient, adding that the fig­ure should ide­al­ly be US$50 mil­lion to at­tract a glob­al au­di­ence.

“You have to pay for of­fice build­ings, of­fice staff, trav­el­ling staff and the for­eign en­ti­ties that help pro­mote you. Fifty mil­lion dol­lars is a drop in the buck­et.

“If you not will­ing to put a lot of mon­ey in­to tourism, all this talk about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is gonna be pie in the sky.”

MacLean said the agen­cies in charge of at­tract­ing cruise lines must al­so be re­vis­it­ed.

“We have to start look­ing at who con­trols the ma­jor­i­ty of cruise ships and maybe get more play­ers in the in­dus­try so it’s not rest­ing on the shoul­ders of one or two en­ti­ties. There are oth­er cruise lines in­ter­est­ed in en­ter­ing To­ba­go and we just have to pick up and move and get them in­to To­ba­go.”

MacLean al­so said in­fra­struc­ture needs to be im­proved, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Port of Char­lot­teville which he said can­not prop­er­ly ac­com­mo­date large cruise lines.

“So we can have cruise ships com­ing on both ends of the is­land. There is a lot of work to be done in that area.”

Mean­while, for­mer tourism min­is­ter and new Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis called for the coun­try to po­si­tion it­self to be more com­pet­i­tive.

She said cruise lines have been tight­en­ing their sched­ules and this would dis­ad­van­tage To­ba­go, con­sid­er­ing it is one of the last des­ti­na­tions in the chain of Caribbean is­lands.

Cud­joe-Lewis said, “We have some ex­tra tax­es that oth­er coun­tries don’t have. For in­stance, when you com­ing off the cruise ship, you have a five cents de­par­ture tax, but in T&T I think it is the on­ly Caribbean is­land that adds an ad­di­tion­al US$1.50 or US$2 for the op­er­a­tors when you go­ing to do a tour. These are the lit­tle things that con­tribute to be­ing com­pet­i­tive.”

She said the cruise in­dus­try is an un­pre­dictable sec­tor as some cruise lines fo­cus on the Mediter­ranean one year and the Caribbean the next.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett could not be reached for com­ment.