While there is grow­ing buzz for To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, the ho­tels in To­ba­go are not yet ful­ly booked for the event.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Chris James said To­ba­go’s hote­liers were an­tic­i­pat­ing the event, but they be­lieved its po­ten­tial was be­ing un­der­sold due to lim­it­ed flights to the is­land.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to the event. We are get­ting book­ings. Our ma­jor prob­lem is the air­bridge. There aren’t enough flights on the air bridge still. So peo­ple aren’t con­firm­ing book­ings who want to fly here rather than use the boats. So that’s a ma­jor prob­lem. We on­ly have the 12 flights. We used to have 20. So that’s a mas­sive con­cern be­cause the book­ings are com­ing in. We still have plen­ty of space, but I think gen­er­al­ly peo­ple look­ing for­ward to it,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

James could not com­ment on the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion re­leased by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly about the event, but said the wider feel­ing among his mem­ber­ship was that a typ­i­cal­ly slow pe­ri­od could be trans­formed by the To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

“In gen­er­al the feel­ing I get here is every­body’s pleased that it’s hap­pen­ing in Oc­to­ber. It’s an­oth­er event where we can get busier than nor­mal,” he said.

“Oc­to­ber’s usu­al­ly qui­et. It’s usu­al­ly a qui­et pe­ri­od. So that’s why we’re pleased that it’s hap­pen­ing. As you know, we’re re­ly­ing more and more on the Trinidad vis­i­tor. Those kinds of long week­ends that we get, the pub­lic hol­i­days and now this re­al­ly helps us cre­ate rea­sons for book­ings.” James re­vealed.

He how­ev­er not­ed the lim­it­ed flights were not sole­ly a chal­lenge To­ba­go faced as there is a “gen­er­al short­age of flights to the re­gion.”

This James ex­plained was due to is­sues in the air­line in­dus­try com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Yeah, for in­stance, British Air­ways was sup­posed to have two flights for the sum­mer to To­ba­go, but they’ve had to re­duce it to one. There are a num­ber of rea­sons. One of them is staff short­ages. Be­lieve it or not, there are staff short­ages world­wide,” said James, who al­lude to re­ports out of the Unit­ed King­dom which ex­plained some air­lines even re­moved seat­ing to en­sure they still had the prop­er flight at­ten­dant to seat ra­tio to op­er­ate.

But he stressed that if the air bridge could step up dur­ing that pe­ri­od it could be a big help to the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go.

“As for the Car­ni­val. We’re look­ing for­ward to it. We hope we can get some ad­di­tion­al flights on the air bridge. We’re pleased with the fer­ry ser­vice but even peo­ple are telling us it’s dif­fi­cult to get across on that as well,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Unique Bed and Break­fast and Self-Cater­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Kay Trot­man said her mem­ber­ship was sim­i­lar­ly in­trigued by the event but had not seen sig­nif­i­cant book­ings as yet.

“At least peo­ple are ex­cit­ed that it’s a new event with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing more folks in­to the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing that pe­ri­od that is nor­mal­ly a slow time. So to have an­oth­er event dur­ing that time, that has the po­ten­tial to bring peo­ple in­to the space is some­thing good. We’re hop­ing that a good enough show can be put on that makes it worth­while to the ef­fort. In terms of book­ings, not every­one has book­ings way down in­to that pe­ri­od, in terms of for­ward book­ings. The larg­er prop­er­ties may have but not, not the ma­jor­i­ty of the small­er prop­er­ties I would say,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Trot­man how­ev­er be­lieve the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion put for­ward by the THA con­tributed to the hes­i­tan­cy in terms of book­ing, as she has heard con­cerns about the rel­a­tive­ly un­known na­ture of the com­ing Car­ni­val.

“Gen­er­al­ly that has been the con­cern in terms of the ac­tu­al ac­tiv­i­ties. That is why I in­di­cat­ed it now all de­pends on what is go­ing to be pre­sent­ed as a Car­ni­val in Oc­to­ber. So I think be­cause of the rel­a­tive new­ness of it, and pos­si­bly al­so the short tim­ing for the plan­ning of it, in my view, that may have been some area of con­cern,” she said.

She ex­plained that giv­en the time­frame, the ap­proach tak­en could have been dif­fer­ent as she hoped this year could have been used as a step­ping stone in the de­vel­op­ment of a ful­ly-fledged Car­ni­val in 2023.

“I think, for me per­son­al­ly, I wished we would have used it as a pre-launch of Car­ni­val 2023. Where it could have been bands pre­sent­ing what would be their pre­sen­ta­tion for Car­ni­val 2023 and in the spir­it of how most peo­ple would have their band launch­es, it would have been used as the band launch for To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2023. So what in­vest­ment peo­ple would have put in­to it would have been from the per­spec­tive of show­ing what we can present lat­er down in­to a new year giv­en the time­frame for it,” said Trot­man.

She said ei­ther way the ex­e­cu­tion would de­ter­mine the suc­cess of the Car­ni­val in the fu­ture, so it was im­por­tant that what­ev­er is held this year would gen­er­ate in­ter­est for the fol­low­ing years.

Trot­man how­ev­er agreed that the lim­it­ed flights to To­ba­go al­so proved a hin­drance to the event’s growth and has been a long-run­ning con­cern for the To­ba­go tourism sec­tor. She how­ev­er hoped Caribbean Air­lines’ ad­di­tion of a di­rect flight from New York to To­ba­go would sig­nif­i­cant­ly help.

“This has al­ways been a prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly with Cal. An is­sue that af­ter years of pub­lic en­gage­ment with the tourism sec­tor and Cal we have not been able to have ful­ly rec­ti­fied. So that is go­ing to be an is­sue. I think with the flight that would be com­ing out of New York, hope­ful­ly, that could serve at some point some parts of the in­ter­est, but then again, it would have to fit in with oth­er con­nect­ing flights to get peo­ple to New York,” said Trot­man, who al­so won­dered if there had been enough mar­ket­ing done to en­cour­age oth­er air­lines to fly to To­ba­go dur­ing that Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

“I am not sure if at this point in time, the event is so mar­ket­ed or broad­cast that it would en­cour­age oth­er air­lines to come to Trinidad or To­ba­go dur­ing that time­frame. Air traf­fic is in­deed some area of con­cern and I think we may have to do prob­a­bly much more mar­ket­ing or lob­by­ing air­lift-wise if we are de­pend­ing on Cal to be able to cov­er that,” she said.