Lagniappe Du­ty Free has op­er­at­ed the liquor shop at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port To­ba­go for the past 21 years. We have seen a lot of ups and downs es­pe­cial­ly the steady de­cline in in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals from 86,467 in 2006 to less than 24,000 in 2015.

Busi­ness had been so slow over the last five years many long-stand­ing con­ces­sion­aires have moved out. There are now sev­er­al emp­ty units at the air­port.

In June 2016, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty moved a shop in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al de­par­ture lounge to sell liquor and craft/cloth­ing. Stech­ers left in April be­cause there is not enough busi­ness to sup­port one per­fume shop yet the Au­thor­i­ty thinks there is enough busi­ness for two craft shops and two liquor shops. The new shop is not sell­ing any­thing dif­fer­ent to what was of­fered be­fore.

This new shop, it is said, has two of the sev­en liquor du­ty free shops in Pi­ar­co Air­port with ac­cess to close to 400,000 in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing there per year. With all that busi­ness in Trinidad, AATT has now in­stalled them in To­ba­go to de­prive the To­ba­go shops of the mea­gre 25,000 pas­sen­gers per year.

It could not get any more un­just than that.

Mar­lene Al­fred,

Lagniappe Du­ty Free Shop, To­ba­go