An al­le­ga­tion from stake­hold­ers is that Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell is on­ly con­cerned with Car­ni­val and the cul­ture part of his min­istry and not the wider tourism sec­tor. But Mitchell ar­gued it is the same Car­ni­val that brought the most amount of work for the very tourism stake­hold­ers.

“Tourism stake­hold­ers are not Car­ni­val pro­duc­ers. Tourism stake­hold­ers are much wider and much more var­ied than that. And it ap­pears that with­in the last cou­ple of years or so, that the Min­istry of Tourism has been fo­cus­ing a lot more on the cul­tur­al as­pect of their min­istry, and more on the Car­ni­val-type as­pect of their min­istry,” said Lor­raine Pouchet, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion.

Pouchet said for some time her as­so­ci­a­tion was not in­volved in any con­sul­ta­tion with the min­istry and did not ex­pect that to change be­fore the 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

“We have not been able to sub­mit any type of con­cerns that we may have. We have been ask­ing to meet with them. And there­fore what­ev­er they have in the bud­get for tourism would not have been as a re­sult of us giv­ing any in­put in­to it,” said Pouchet.

Her sen­ti­ment was shared by Denise Ale­ong, pres­i­dent of the Small Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Own­ers of Trinidad & To­ba­go.

“I don’t know if to wish or an­tic­i­pate any­thing be­cause the Min­is­ter of Tourism isn’t talk­ing to any­body in Tourism about any­thing, he fo­cus­ing on cul­ture and Car­ni­val and 2,000 cruise ship work­ers. They’re not en­gag­ing with the tourism stake­hold­ers like us. I don’t know if they are en­gag­ing oth­ers but we are not aware,” said Ale­ong.

“No­body told us, no­body call us and ask us a ques­tion about any­thing about what we can do post-COVID for re­cov­ery. A lot of busi­ness­es got shut down and closed down and closed up in the tourism sphere,” said Ale­ong.

Mitchell was wary of Pouchet’s com­ments, giv­en her af­fil­i­a­tion to an op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ty, and de­fend­ed the Min­istry’s in­vest­ment in Car­ni­val as he not­ed it was the pe­ri­od where the coun­try had the high­est num­ber of vis­i­tors which he said usu­al­ly brought busi­ness for tour op­er­a­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Pouchet be­lieved more needs to be done to ad­dress the up­keep of lo­cal at­trac­tions. She said Car­ni­val fes­ti­vals al­ready had a size­able base and would re­ceive sim­i­lar tourism re­turns with or with­out an ad­di­tion­al push from the Gov­ern­ment as it large­ly re­mained tied to re­turn­ing vis­i­tors from the di­as­po­ra.

“Un­less a prod­uct can at­tract new peo­ple to your des­ti­na­tion, then you have a prob­lem. If it can­not at­tract new peo­ple then it’s not a prod­uct, it’s just some­thing that hap­pens and peo­ple come and some­times they bring peo­ple with them,” said Pouchet, who ques­tioned how many new vis­i­tors ar­rive for Car­ni­val.

“We need to look at if we want for­eign vis­i­tors to come here to de­vel­op our tourism prod­uct. The first and most im­por­tant thing peo­ple are con­cerned about is when they come in­to your coun­try, they will be safe. I don’t think any of us can guar­an­tee that right now be­cause we as cit­i­zens can­not be safe. That’s num­ber one,” said Pouchet, “The sec­ond thing is that our sights and at­trac­tions must be of a stan­dard that meets in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments, that their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty with­in the sights and at­trac­tions at the pub­lic toi­let fa­cil­i­ties and that we have life­guards on the beach­es.”

She al­so raised ques­tions about fu­ture plans fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute, bet­ter known as the ho­tel school, in terms of train­ing na­tion­als for the tourism sec­tor and called for a grant to of­fer to tourism stake­hold­ers who saw a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their liveli­hood af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic.

“We al­so need to have some kind of grant fund­ing for those peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the en­tre­pre­neurs who were re­al­ly bad­ly hit. In that time, two years when we were to­tal­ly shut down. We have lost quite a few, I would say be­tween 40 to 60% of the en­tre­pre­neurs with­in tourism are gone. That we talk­ing about the sup­ply chain be­cause tourism is not just about ho­tels and tour op­er­a­tors, it’s about the ar­ti­sans; it is about the peo­ple who do the lit­tle gift bas­kets; it’s about the peo­ple who sell the lo­cal prod­ucts; it’s about the tour guides; it’s about the taxi dri­vers; it’s about every part of the sup­ply chain and a lot of them have been hit very hard,” said Pouchet who added while op­er­a­tors had heard that cruise ships may re­turn in No­vem­ber, there were ex­pect­ing low­er re­turns than be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Cruise ships are now start­ing, we just start­ed back, we haven’t even had an of­fi­cial word from the min­istry. When is this in­dus­try go­ing to start back? We hear through the grapevine is No­vem­ber but we have not heard any of­fi­cial word and the num­ber of ships I’m hear­ing is not go­ing to be half as much as what we used to get, so even the per­sons who can be em­ployed through that but get a lot less in­come, be­cause there are a lot less calls from the ships,” said Pouchet.

She lament­ed that apart from the push for Car­ni­val there was very lit­tle in terms of pro­mot­ing or mar­ket­ing Tourism in the coun­try.

“Trinidad is not mar­ket­ing tourism at all. We have no over­seas peo­ple mar­ket­ing the des­ti­na­tion. So peo­ple don’t know where you are. What are you go­ing here for? Tell me. They have to know where you are. So we need over­seas mar­ket­ing and we need col­lab­o­ra­tion, pub­lic-pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion,” said Pouchet.

The clam­our for mar­ket­ing was shared by Car­ol Ann Birch­wood James, vice-Pres­i­dent, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, who list­ed im­proved mar­ket­ing as her main re­quest when con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

“Give more mon­ey for mar­ket­ing in tourism. That is Trinidad as well as To­ba­go. More mon­ey for mar­ket­ing. The bud­get is not enough,” said Birch­wood James.

She added, “If we have more mon­ey for mar­ket­ing we can have more dis­cus­sions.”

Her on­ly oth­er re­quest was the ad­di­tion of more flights to To­ba­go, which has been a long-run­ning con­cern for hote­liers on the is­land.

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to Ali­cia Ed­wards, Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed. How­ev­er, she de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter.