Stephon Nicholas

Sec­re­tary of Tourism Zor­isha Hack­ett has de­scribed the new Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) week­ly di­rect flight from Toron­to to To­ba­go as a win for the is­land. CAL an­nounced the flight on Fri­day, adding that the ser­vice will be­gin on Oc­to­ber 25, ahead of the fifth an­nu­al To­ba­go Car­ni­val, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1.

In a Face­book state­ment, Hack­ett said she was pleased with the de­vel­op­ment and be­lieves its suc­cess will be part of her lega­cy since ful­ly as­sum­ing the port­fo­lio in Jan­u­ary.

"It is so good to see this long-await­ed route fi­nal­ly come to fruition, and I be­lieve it will stand as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant ear­ly wins of my tenure in this new port­fo­lio," she said.

Hack­ett said the flight was achieved through "ad­vo­ca­cy, per­sis­tence and work" by her di­vi­sion, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency and CAL.

She added greater ac­cess to To­ba­go means "stronger con­nec­tions with our di­as­po­ra, new op­por­tu­ni­ties for tourism and busi­ness, and an­oth­er im­por­tant step to­wards build­ing a more con­nect­ed To­ba­go."

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­cent­ly an­nounced des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go has been re­ceiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion from the Cana­da mar­ket com­pared to oth­er re­gion­al neigh­bours. He said re­cent ne­go­ti­a­tions with Cana­di­an firms re­vealed di­rect flights from Mon­tre­al to Bar­ba­dos and Cu­ra­cao were de­clin­ing.

"We found an in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 more peo­ple this year than last year search­ing for ways to get to To­ba­go from Mon­tre­al. Imag­ine 40,000 peo­ple ac­tive­ly search­ing, and that da­ta was up to Au­gust this year."

Many Cana­di­ans have been boy­cotting the US due to po­lit­i­cal fric­tion over tar­iffs im­ple­ment­ed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, and are look­ing to new mar­kets to en­joy their va­ca­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a 2026 re­port from the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, the boy­cott has cost Amer­i­cans US$3 bil­lion in tourism rev­enue.

With Cana­di­ans eye­ing new des­ti­na­tions to spend their mon­ey, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go's favourable prices au­gur well for the is­land.

He said the av­er­age price of a ho­tel room in To­ba­go is around US$200 com­pared to around US$500 and more in Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da. How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine be­lieves To­ba­go can still im­prove the qual­i­ty of its room stock.

"There are ben­e­fits to be­ing cheap and cheer­ful, but what we want to do is mix the cheap and cheer­ful with some lux­u­ry ac­com­mo­da­tion."

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty (TPP) has al­so hailed the new di­rect flight as a ma­jor boost for To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor.