Soon To­ba­go would be re­ceiv­ing the re­quired at­ten­tion it de­served with re­gards to tourism, says Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz. First on the agen­da, Cadiz said is se­cur­ing the re­quired air­lift the is­land needs.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Sat­ur­day, Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment has se­cured a con­tract with a Scan­di­na­vian air­line to fly to T&T win­ter 2013, which usu­al­ly starts in Oc­to­ber.

To­ba­go al­ready has flights from Copen­hagen air­port (Den­mark); one of the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries.

Cadiz said the new gov­ern­ment is in dis­cus­sions to have ad­di­tion­al flights from Copen­hagen air­port to To­ba­go.

He said the air­line has re­quest­ed fur­ther de­tails be with­held un­til it (the air­line) of­fi­cial­ly launch­es the route.

Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment has al­so se­cured the con­tin­u­a­tion of flights in­to To­ba­go with Monarch and Con­dor Air­lines and is in dis­cus­sions with the new air­line West jet to fly from Cana­da to To­ba­go.

Present­ly, West­Jet flies from Cana­da to Trinidad.

Monarch flies twice week­ly from Lon­don to To­ba­go, while Con­dor pro­vides a week­ly di­rect ser­vice to To­ba­go from Frank­furt.

Aris­ing out of the stake­hold­ers' meet­ing on Fri­day at Co­co Reef in To­ba­go, Cadiz said Vir­gin At­lantic would con­tin­ue its win­ter sched­ule af­ter pulling out its sum­mer flights.

He said the min­istry would con­tin­ue to have dis­cus­sions with Vir­gin At­lantic and the oth­er air­lines to un­der­stand the chal­lenges of air­lines fly­ing in­to To­ba­go to achieve a suc­cess­ful and con­sis­tent air­lift.

An­oth­er key ini­tia­tive is the Routes Amer­i­c­as 2013 con­fer­ence, which would be held over the Car­ni­val week­end in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia. Cadiz ex­plained that rep­re­sen­ta­tives from T&T would be at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence to dis­cuss pos­si­ble air­lifts from coun­tries such as Colom­bia, Pana­ma and Brazil.

"We have been work­ing hard for the last six months and we would con­tin­ue to push for in­creased air­lift, but I think we have al­ready be­gan to bear fruit."

He said re­fur­bish­ment work on the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port re­fur­bish­ment is to start this week.

"The ar­rival and de­par­ture halls would see ma­jor work done to them and the ex­ist­ing roof of the air­port would be re­placed. We need to en­hance these ar­eas to at­tract and make tourists' stay com­fort­able.

The re­fur­bish­ment is al­so nec­es­sary for im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms of­fi­cers who need the re­quired space to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly."

New in­cen­tives for ho­tels

Cadiz said the min­istry was very con­cerned there were no new in­vest­ments in To­ba­go over the years, de­spite the Gov­ern­ment's loan guar­an­tee that al­lows lo­cal and for­eign in­vestors to con­struct new ho­tels.

He ex­plained the Gov­ern­ment would act as a guar­an­tor up to a max­i­mum of 70 per cent of an in­vest­ment.

He said the min­istry would be im­prov­ing the cur­rent room stock in To­ba­go, but would be re­assess­ing the 20-year old in­cen­tives for hote­liers.

"I would be go­ing back to the Min­istry of Fi­nance to dis­cuss and re­assess these in­cen­tives."

Ac­cord­ing to the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's Web site, the T&T Ho­tel and Guest­house Room Stock Up­grade In­cen­tive Project is a two-year project to fa­cil­i­tate the up­grade of the ex­ist­ing room stock of small and medi­um-sized ho­tels and guest­hous­es. Prop­er­ties will be re­im­bursed 25 per cent of the cost of up­grade works per room and there will be a dol­lar val­ue ceil­ing ap­plic­a­ble for a max­i­mum re­im­burse­ment of $12,500 per room (Trinidad) and $15,000 per room (To­ba­go).

The guest hous­es and ho­tels must meet the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria:

• 100 rooms or less

• Four years and old­er

• Cur­rent in pay­ment of ho­tel room tax

• Town and Coun­try Plan­ning ap­proved

• In pos­ses­sion of cur­rent BIR and VAT clear­ance cer­tifi­cates

• Cer­ti­fied/reg­is­tered un­der the T&T Tourism In­dus­try Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gramme (TT­TIC) or THA or, if not, will­ing to sign a for­mal com­mit­ment to ap­ply for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion/reg­is­tra­tion through the TDC/THA

• Not cur­rent­ly in re­ceipt of grant funds for room up­grades from any oth­er arm or agency of the Gov­ern­ment

Tourism pack­ages

Cadiz said the min­istry would be work­ing with Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) to en­cour­age it not on­ly to sell seats, but va­ca­tion and tourism pack­ages.

"We have to get them to un­der­stand that we are not jut mov­ing peo­ple, but we are sell­ing a des­ti­na­tion. Tourists from all over should be able to buy a hol­i­day pack­age from CAL in the near fu­ture."

If this ini­tia­tive is suc­cess­ful, Cadiz said, it would au­gur well for T&T as the min­istry would soon be launch­ing its first des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing project where T&T would have a glob­al brand of its own.

He said there would al­so be a na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness pro­gramme geared to­wards rais­ing the tourism pro­file of T&T. This $5 mil­lion project would in­clude ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic on the val­ue of tourism.

Aris­ing out of the Seatrade Med con­fer­ence in late No­vem­ber, which was held in France, Cadiz said T&T was able to se­cure 26 ad­di­tion­al calls to the na­tion's port with sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean cruise ship lines.

"There is a great po­ten­tial for T&T be­com­ing a home port for these Eu­ro­pean cruise lines. We are cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions."