Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing ad­di­tion­al fast fer­ry sail­ings avail­able on the Trinidad to To­ba­go seabridge in Oc­to­ber, in re­sponse to com­plaints from To­ba­go tourism in­ter­ests that the is­land’s Car­ni­val was at risk of fail­ure be­cause of trans­porta­tion un­cer­tain­ty.

Re­spond­ing to queries from Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp last night, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said a draft sched­ule for the T&T Spir­it has been pre­pared and will be re­leased soon.

The min­is­ter al­so shared a doc­u­ment ad­vis­ing “that ad­di­tion­al sail­ings are be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the Oc­to­ber seabridge sched­ule, util­is­ing the T&T Spir­it and Buc­coo Reef fast fer­ries.

“The ad­di­tion­al ser­vices will in­crease pas­sen­ger and ve­hi­cle ca­pac­i­ty dur­ing the Oc­to­ber trav­el pe­ri­ods, in­clud­ing the an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in de­mand sur­round­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val.”

The doc­u­ment, an un­re­leased seabridge up­date dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 21, 2026 and is­sued by the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, said the up­dat­ed sail­ing sched­ules for the two fast fer­ries will be re­leased short­ly, with book­ing avail­abil­i­ty to fol­low.

John’s in­ter­ven­tion came as To­ba­go hote­liers re­port­ed can­celled book­ings close to one month be­fore its 5th an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions get un­der­way.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) head Regi­nald Mac Lean said many guests have al­ready bought their Car­ni­val cos­tumes and fete tick­ets, but were un­able to get to To­ba­go. He said sev­er­al ho­tels, in­clud­ing Blue Wa­ters Inn, which he man­ages, have re­port­ed can­cel­la­tions.

“There are a lot of peo­ple com­plain­ing that the flights and fer­ry book­ings are not there. The spin-off on that is you get can­cel­la­tions,” he said.

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a lose-lose for the ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor and trav­ellers.

“Put your­self in two po­si­tions. You’re a ho­tel, re­sort, bed and break­fast, guest­house, what­ev­er. Peo­ple book­ing your rooms but don’t wan­na pay a de­posit be­cause they can’t get a con­fir­ma­tion on trav­el. How long are you go­ing to sit as a prop­er­ty and hold those book­ings?

“But then you have the oth­er side, peo­ple are go­ing to wait as long as pos­si­ble to book, and then they may not get any trans­port.”

He said even if ho­tels re­coup some funds by hav­ing a can­cel­la­tion pol­i­cy, the sec­tor is still los­ing rev­enue.

“I will not ac­cept a book­ing with­out a de­posit, then I have my can­cel­la­tion pe­ri­od.

“If you have a busy pe­ri­od, you have a group booked and they can­cel a week or month be­fore, how you fill­ing those rooms? Peo­ple still can’t get the flights or fer­ry tick­ets to get here.”

To­ba­go Car­ni­val, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1, is one of the main events on the tourism cal­en­dar, at­tract­ing thou­sands of vis­i­tors to the is­land.

How­ev­er, many prospec­tive rev­ellers from Trinidad com­plained that in­ad­e­quate sail­ings made it dif­fi­cult to get to the is­land. Tick­ets from Port-of-Spain to Scar­bor­ough, for the peak Oc­to­ber 27-30 pe­ri­od, sold out 24 hours af­ter they went on­line.

Over 22,000 were trans­port­ed to the Car­ni­val on the seabridge in 2025 with 22 ad­di­tion­al sail­ings. How­ev­er, just six ad­di­tion­al sail­ings have been sched­uled for this year’s event.

Amid a myr­i­ad of com­plaints from stake­hold­ers, which in­clud­ed the To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and Sec­re­tary of Tourism Zor­isha Hack­ett, the Port Au­thor­i­ty, on Sep­tem­ber 16, promised to pro­vide an up­date on the two ves­sels and ad­di­tion­al sail­ings by Sep­tem­ber 21.