If one mil­lion tourists re­al­ly vis­it­ed To­ba­go in 2013, the fi­nan­cial state­ments of hote­liers would have been look­ing bet­ter, Car­olyn Birch­wood-James, vice pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) told the T&T Guardian.She was re­spond­ing to claims by Sec­re­tary of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, that for the first time in To­ba­go's his­to­ry there were one mil­lion vis­i­tors to the is­land last year"I am at a loss as to how they cal­cu­lat­ed that fig­ure. In fact the pri­vate stake­hold­ers are at a loss as to how that fig­ure was ar­rived at," Birch­wood-James said. "While they are quot­ing those fig­ures, a lot of our hote­liers and peo­ple in the tourism in­dus­try are still try­ing to get in­to the To­ba­go Tourism De­vel­op­ment Fund and to get that go­ing. It has been a dif­fi­cult time."If we have had all those ar­rivals then our fi­nan­cial state­ments should look more buoy­ant than they look now."

Last week, in her con­tri­bu­tion to the THA bud­get de­bate, David­son-Ce­les­tine said the 1,001,752 tourists who vis­it­ed To­ba­go last year sur­passed the num­bers record­ed in many oth­er Caribbean is­lands, in­clud­ing Saint Lu­cia, which had 952,390 vis­i­tors for the same pe­ri­od.Birch­wood James said in terms of for­eign vis­i­tor ar­rivals, there was ac­tu­al­ly a de­crease."There was some­thing like 25,000 for­eign ar­rivals in 2013 and that is a drop from 86,000 in 2006. This is a big drop and this is why the To­ba­go hote­liers are in big prob­lems," she said, adding that the one mil­lion vis­i­tors is a broad cal­cu­la­tion."I guess they are count­ing vis­i­tor ar­rivals on fer­ries, and vis­i­tor ar­rivals on the air­bridge. They have not bro­ken down the fig­ures as to who came for the day to do busi­ness and that sort of thing. Whether it is a mil­lion vis­i­tors or not, the fact re­mains our tourism stake­hold­ers are still very fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged," Birch­wood-James said. She said 2014 has been up­beat so far.

"We have had an in­crease in for­eign vis­i­tors and that is main­ly due to our Scan­di­na­vian flights. We do have an in­crease in the num­ber of Trinida­di­ans com­ing to To­ba­go. Re­mem­ber, with the ex­cep­tion of East­er as well as Ju­ly and Au­gust, most vis­i­tors from Trinidad come for the week­end. You re­al­ly can­not pay the bank with vis­i­tors com­ing two days a week," she said.She said the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors must work to­geth­er to find so­lu­tions."We must de­vel­op pack­ages where peo­ple from Trinidad can spend four and five days on the is­land. We have to en­cour­age more air­lift. For ex­am­ple there has been a 45 per cent in­crease in vis­i­tor ar­rivals from Cana­da to Trinidad but we do not have di­rect flights to To­ba­go. We should have a di­rect flight from Cana­da to To­ba­go," she said.