It is a gem with un­spoilt beau­ty famed for its aro­mat­ic spices and or­gan­ic choco­late.

The tri-is­land des­ti­na­tion of Grena­da, Car­ri­a­cou, and Pe­tite Mar­tinique, lo­cat­ed in the East­ern Caribbean, has be­come so pop­u­lar with T&T na­tion­als that they are in­creas­ing­ly buy­ing prop­er­ty in the is­land, main­ly in the af­flu­ent area of L’Anse aux Epines.

“This area is in the south­ern part of the is­land and where most of the tourism belt ex­ists. What we have ob­served is that in re­cent months, many Trinida­di­ans have been buy­ing prop­er­ties in Grena­da and they would come and spend two, three months and then re­turn to Trinidad.

“They in­di­cate that one of the val­ues Grena­da has as a des­ti­na­tion is it is peace­ful and there is prac­ti­cal­ly no vi­o­lence. You can walk the streets any time of the day or night and you would not be at­tacked or ha­rassed,” Grena­da’s Tourism Min­is­ter Lennox An­drews told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He was one of many key stake­hold­ers at a “des­ti­na­tion road­show,” which sought to strength­en tourism ties be­tween T&T and Grena­da.

The event, which was host­ed by the Grena­da Tourism Au­thor­i­ty, was held last Thurs­day at the Brix ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to An­drews, Trinidad is Grena­da’s third largest mar­ket for vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

How­ev­er, Grena­da took a se­vere hit when the pan­dem­ic struck about two years ago.

“It af­fect­ed not just the health of our peo­ple, but al­so our tourism and econ­o­my with peo­ple not be­ing able to go out to work, with the ho­tels prac­ti­cal­ly be­ing closed and with the air­lines be­ing un­able to come to Grena­da. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od we took steps to look af­ter the ho­tel work­ers who were af­fect­ed by the lack of em­ploy­ment by pro­vid­ing some form of fi­nan­cial sub­sidy on a month­ly ba­sis to keep them go­ing. When the pan­dem­ic came to an end, we were able to get our ho­tels and hote­liers back to work,” An­drews said.

He said the is­land’s tourism re­cov­ery has been ex­cel­lent.

An­drews not­ed that with some of the stay­over ar­rivals like those from the US for in­stance, Grena­da cur­rent­ly reg­is­ters “about 90 per cent above the 2019 lev­els.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, all in­ter­na­tion­al flights are com­ing to the Spice Isle in­clud­ing Air Cana­da, Amer­i­can Air­lines, British Air­ways, Sun­wing and Jet­blue.

An­drews said Jet­blue, which flies from Mi­a­mi and New York, ar­rives in Grena­da every day.

“Most of the in­ter­na­tion­al flights are com­ing in prac­ti­cal­ly full every day and they are leav­ing full,” An­drews added.

Re­gard­ing trav­el with­in the re­gion, the Grena­da Tourism Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged this has al­so im­proved.

“This is be­cause of the arrange­ments we have with In­ter­Caribbean and Caribbean Air­lines,” An­drews said, adding that the lat­ter comes to Grena­da nine times a week which con­tin­ues to en­hance the is­land’s tourism prod­uct.

Re­gard­ing the pro­pos­al for an in­ter-is­land fer­ry be­tween To­ba­go and Grena­da, An­drews said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing.

Nikoy­an Roberts, head of prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and cus­tomer ser­vices at the Grena­da Board of Tourism shared some in­sights about the is­land’s ac­com­mo­da­tion com­pris­ing a room­stock of 2,574.

These in­clude 1,777 re­sort/ho­tel rooms; 371 apart­ments; 163 vil­las; 209 guest­hous­es and 54 cot­tages.

Re­gard­ing new ho­tel de­vel­op­ments, Roberts said there are 305 ad­di­tion­al pro­ject­ed rooms sched­uled for com­ple­tion be­tween 2023 and 2025.

The new de­vel­op­ments are Six Sens­es with 124 rooms, Beach House with 31 and In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal with 150.

Re­gard­ing to­tal vis­i­tor ar­rivals for Jan­u­ary to May 2023 Roberts broke down the fig­ur­ers as cruise 198,896; yacht­ing 11,494 and stay­over vis­i­tors 73,485.

For the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od for 2019, the fig­ur­ers were cruise 223,027; yacht­ing 14,082 and stay­over 70,053.

The des­ti­na­tion road­show al­so pro­mot­ed Spice­Mas-Grena­da’s biggest sum­mer fes­ti­val which takes place from Au­gust 1 to 15. Grena­da’s car­ni­val is a cel­e­bra­tion with monarch com­pe­ti­tions, great food, fetes, jab and pageantry.

Oth­er fes­ti­vals which have gained in­ter­na­tion­al at­trac­tion in­clude Grena­da’s Spice Is­land Bill­fish Tour­na­ment, the Grena­da Sail­ing Week, Car­ri­a­cou Re­gat­ta Fes­ti­val and the Pe­tite Mar­tinique Re­gat­ta Fes­ti­val.

Apart from such ac­tiv­i­ties, Grena­da al­so beck­ons vis­i­tors to its 40 white sandy beach­es in­clud­ing the world-fa­mous Grand Anse Beach, 15 wa­ter­falls, sev­en choco­late fac­to­ries, three rum dis­til­leries, and more than 30 dive sites, in­clud­ing the largest ship­wreck in the Caribbean ‘Bian­ca C’ and the World’s first un­der­wa­ter sculp­ture park.

Grena­da’s vol­un­tourism pro­gramme is al­so grow­ing.

Launched in March 2022, it gives vis­i­tors the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage with lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and cul­ture while mak­ing a tan­gi­ble im­pact.

For in­stance, re­gard­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, Roberts said these in­clude beach clean-ups, li­on­fish hunts, tur­tle re­search and mon­i­tor­ing as well as coral reef and man­grove restora­tion.

“Vis­i­tors can go out to the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties where they can be a gar­den­er for a day, work with stray an­i­mals, re­plant man­groves, spice trees.

“So we get you in­volved in tak­ing care of the en­vi­ron­ment and make you feel like you have re­al­ly done some­thing to pro­tect the earth,” Roberts fur­ther ex­plained.

She not­ed Grena­da al­so boasts of be­ing a lead­ing culi­nary cap­i­tal.

“We are en­ter­ing part­ner­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al chefs who are James Beard award re­cip­i­ents to do tastemak­er events and con­tin­ue to train our young peo­ple in ca­reers that touch on culi­nary mixol­o­gy and the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try,” Roberts said.

The James Beard Awards rec­og­nizes ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent and achieve­ment in the culi­nary arts, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, me­dia, and broad­er food sys­tems, as well as a demon­strat­ed com­mit­ment to racial and gen­der eq­ui­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and a cul­ture where all can thrive.

Grena­da has al­so won many ac­co­lades in­clud­ing 10 Awards from USA To­day, Read­ers’ Choice Awards and the Best Caribbean Beach: Par­adise Beach, Car­ri­a­cou.

Grena­da was al­so list­ed in the top 22 best places to trav­el to in 2022 by Forbes as well as be­ing among the top 10 eth­i­cal des­ti­na­tions in the world.

The is­land’s un­der­wa­ter sculp­ture park was list­ed as one of the top 25 Won­ders of the World and Grena­da is al­so the win­ner of 16 gold medals at the Roy­al Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety’s Chelsea Flower Show.

Ear­li­er this year, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, led a trade mis­sion to Grena­da.

She not­ed the is­land is a sig­nif­i­cant trad­ing part­ner for T&T, rank­ing as its 15th ex­port des­ti­na­tion in 2022 and fifth top ex­port des­ti­na­tion with­in Cari­com.

Over the pe­ri­od 2018 to 2022, this coun­try main­tained a favourable trade bal­ance with Grena­da with the main ex­ports be­ing ce­ment, bis­cuits, cig­a­rettes, aer­at­ed bev­er­ages, ce­re­als and toi­let pa­per.