Raphael John-Lall

The planned re­turn of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to Venezuela soon is be­ing wel­comed by trav­el in­dus­try op­er­a­tors, with trav­el agen­cies say­ing the di­rect air link should make trav­el be­tween T&T and Venezuela more con­ve­nient for both busi­ness and leisure pas­sen­gers.

CAL sus­pend­ed its flights to Venezuela last Sep­tem­ber, but did not give any rea­sons at that time. The an­nounce­ment of its re­turn has come af­ter the vis­it of Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, to Venezuela in the first week of Sep­tem­ber.

On its web­site on Fri­day, CAL in­di­cat­ed that its first flight back to Cara­cas would be on the morn­ing of Oc­to­ber 17. The fare on the web­site is list­ed at US$359.45, but the seats are un­avail­able.

Present­ly, Ru­ta­ca and Co­pa Air­lines fly be­tween Venezuela and T&T.

Oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines like Amer­i­can Air­lines have al­ready re­turned to Venezuela.

So­phie Navar­ro who is the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at Navar­ro’s Trav­el Ser­vice Ltd. told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the lat­est de­vel­op­ment should have a pos­i­tive im­pact on their in­dus­try and on busi­ness in gen­er­al.

“Over­all, we see this as pos­i­tive news. Trav­el be­tween T&T and Venezuela is a con­stant, and there is cer­tain­ly a de­mand for pas­sen­gers look­ing for con­ve­nient ways to trav­el be­tween neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. The re­sump­tion of these flights should help strength­en both busi­ness and so­cial con­nec­tions be­tween the two mar­kets.”

She added that she is hope­ful that the ser­vice will of­fer af­ford­able pric­ing and a re­li­able, con­sis­tent sched­ule and if all goes well, she be­lieves every­one will ben­e­fit from the re­sump­tion of this route.

A spokesper­son for Ready 2 Trav­el based in Ari­ma said di­rect flights from Port-of-Spain to Cara­cas would be par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial to clients who pre­vi­ous­ly had to make con­nec­tions, in­clud­ing through Pana­ma, to reach Venezuela.

“That di­rect flight op­tion is al­ways some­thing that is wel­comed by the clients rather than hav­ing to make a lot of con­nec­tions. Some of the pas­sen­gers be­fore would have had to pass via Pana­ma to go to Venezuela, which is so close.”

The trav­el agency al­so ex­pects the re­sumed CAL ser­vice to ben­e­fit mem­bers of the Venezue­lan di­as­po­ra liv­ing in T&T who trav­el to vis­it fam­i­ly, as well as busi­ness trav­ellers.

While the di­rect Cara­cas flights are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a new op­por­tu­ni­ty, the spokesper­son said Mar­gari­ta has re­mained a strong des­ti­na­tion for T&T trav­ellers, with Ready 2 Trav­el con­tin­u­ing to of­fer flights and va­ca­tion pack­ages to that Venezue­lan is­land.

“Mar­gari­ta is a sell­er from ever since, and peo­ple are still go­ing.”

The spokesper­son said the des­ti­na­tion con­tin­ued to at­tract strong de­mand dur­ing the sum­mer, with “sold out flights.”

Ready 2 Trav­el’s man­age­ment be­lieves Caribbean Air­lines’ re­turn to Cara­cas could en­cour­age trav­ellers who have tra­di­tion­al­ly cho­sen Mar­gari­ta to con­sid­er oth­er des­ti­na­tions in Venezuela.

“Yes, of course,” the spokesper­son said when asked whether the air­line’s re­turn would ben­e­fit trav­el agents and the in­dus­try.

Look­ing ahead, Ready 2 Trav­el is al­so prepar­ing a Eu­ro­pean group tour for Ju­ly 2027, be­gin­ning in Am­s­ter­dam and trav­el­ling through nine coun­tries be­fore end­ing in Rome.

In a state­ment, An­ders Trav­el Agency based in Point Fortin, said it sees CAL’s re­turn as a pos­i­tive move which will en­hance tourism be­tween the two coun­tries.

“Yes, it is di­rect flight from Port-of-Spain to Cara­cas. It al­so de­pends on the cost of air­fare. A client will pay as Ru­ta­ca of­fers a 50lb check bag with a 20lb car­ry on with­out ex­tra cost.”

The state­ment al­so said that busi­ness was ro­bust be­fore the earth­quake that hit Venezuela in June.

“Oc­ca­sion­al­ly be­fore the earth­quake, my agency did busi­ness with a trav­el sup­pli­er from Mar­gari­ta by the name of Hov­er Tours. They whole­sale the pack­ages to us which is most­ly all-in­clu­sive apart from Mar­gari­ta. They do tours to Cara­cas and oth­er ar­eas which of­fer var­i­ous sight­see­ing, wildlife and ad­ven­tur­ous tours the mar­ket through PMV (air­port in Mar­gari­ta) to Cara­cas. This was on the up­side just be­fore the earth­quake.”

At the same time, the man­age­ment of An­ders Trav­el be­lieves that CAL’s suc­cess will de­pend on their prices and the fre­quen­cy of their flights.

“All this is based on the fre­quen­cy of the flights, the num­ber of flights per week. The ma­jor­i­ty of my cus­tomers vis­it Mar­gari­ta. The re-in­tro­duc­tion of CAL will be help­ful to per­sons go­ing di­rect to Cara­cas. It will ease the bur­den of go­ing through PMV on a con­nect­ing flight.”

Over the last few years there has been an in­crease in T&T na­tion­als trav­el­ling to Venezuela, specif­i­cal­ly the is­land of Mar­gari­ta.

Ac­cord­ing to an ar­ti­cle from Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Uni­ver­sal dat­ed Ju­ly 14, 2025 be­tween 2023 to 2025 more than 12,000 tourists from T&T vis­it­ed Mar­gari­ta alone.

Cur­rent­ly, the T&T to Venezuela route is cov­ered by Ru­ta­ca, while Co­pa serves the Venezue­lan mar­ket via Pana­ma.

In Feb­ru­ary of this year, new­ly ap­point­ed Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Tourism, Daniel­la Ca­bel­lo said Venezuela re­ceived 3.4 mil­lion tourists in 2025, a 44 per­cent in­crease from 2024.

Strate­gic re­turn

Caribbean Air­lines’ planned re­turn to Venezuela could strength­en T&T’s po­si­tion as a re­gion­al gate­way, while cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for trade, busi­ness and in­vest­ment, ac­cord­ing to for­mer Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian that the move was strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant as Venezuela re­con­nects with in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of Trinidad’s ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty to the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

He said the re­turn of CAL could strength­en Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s po­ten­tial as the Caribbean gate­way to Venezuela, al­low­ing the air­line to cap­ture Venezue­lan pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling on­ward to oth­er Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

That could trans­late in­to in­creased pas­sen­ger traf­fic and greater rev­enues for the air­port, while al­so ben­e­fit­ting ho­tels and oth­er ser­vice providers.

Bharath said im­proved air con­nec­tiv­i­ty could al­so stim­u­late trade and busi­ness be­tween the two coun­tries by fa­cil­i­tat­ing busi­ness trav­el, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and the move­ment of high­er-val­ue goods.

He not­ed that T&T and Venezuela al­ready have pref­er­en­tial trade arrange­ments, al­though these re­main un­der­utilised.

These in­clude the 1989 Trinidad and To­ba­go/Venezuela Par­tial Scope Agree­ment, which pro­vides tar­iff pref­er­ences on spec­i­fied goods, and the Cari­com/Venezuela Trade and In­vest­ment Agree­ment, signed in 1992 and en­ter­ing in­to force in 1993.

The Cari­com-Venezuela agree­ment pro­vides Venezue­lan mar­ket ac­cess for spec­i­fied Cari­com prod­ucts, in­clud­ing du­ty-free treat­ment for cer­tain prod­ucts and tar­iff re­duc­tions on oth­ers.

Bharath said im­proved con­nec­tiv­i­ty could there­fore pro­vide a prac­ti­cal means of sup­port­ing trade arrange­ments that have not reached their full po­ten­tial.

Wider po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty

Bharath al­so point­ed to a po­ten­tial po­lit­i­cal open­ing fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 2026 vis­it of T&T’s For­eign Min­is­ter to Venezuela.

He said the two gov­ern­ments had agreed on a work agen­da cov­er­ing trade, en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, en­vi­ron­men­tal co­op­er­a­tion, cul­ture and se­cu­ri­ty.

Against that back­drop, Bharath ar­gued that CAL’s re­turn should not be viewed sim­ply as the restora­tion of an air­line route.

For T&T, the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits there­fore ex­tend be­yond ad­di­tion­al pas­sen­gers. A stronger air bridge could sup­port com­mer­cial links, re­vive un­der­utilised trade op­por­tu­ni­ties and com­ple­ment the wider gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agen­da now be­ing de­vel­oped with Venezuela.

“Con­se­quent­ly, CAL’s re­turn should be viewed as more than an air­line route. It could be­come part of a broad­er ef­fort to po­si­tion T&T as Venezuela’s nat­ur­al Caribbean com­mer­cial, avi­a­tion and in­vest­ment gate­way, par­tic­u­lar­ly if CAL ex­pands fre­quen­cy and con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­yond Cara­cas and po­lit­i­cal in­sen­si­tiv­i­ties are calmed.”