Tourism con­tin­ues to be a crit­i­cal pil­lar in this coun­try’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust.

In his 2025 bud­get, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stat­ed T&T’s tourism in­dus­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a re­mark­able resur­gence, with air­lines tak­ing the lead in this post-pan­dem­ic re­vival.

He said there was a 36 per cent surge in air ar­rivals in 2023, with pro­jec­tions for 2024 to ex­ceed these num­bers.

In 2024/2025, $354.71 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, com­pris­ing $315.71 mil­lion in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and $39 mil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture.

Some of the mea­sures in­clude set­ting an am­bi­tious tar­get of 500,000 an­nu­al vis­i­tors by 2026. Im­bert at­trib­uted this goal to strate­gic mar­ket­ing and sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing a $56.6 mil­lion ren­o­va­tion of the Mag­dale­na Grand and a $400 mil­lion mod­erni­sa­tion of the Hilton Trinidad.

“These up­grades are key to stay­ing com­pet­i­tive and cre­at­ing jobs,” he as­sert­ed, pro­ject­ing hun­dreds of new po­si­tions in hos­pi­tal­i­ty as a di­rect re­sult of these ini­tia­tives.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, both Caribbean Air­lines and Fron­tier Air­lines have ramped up op­er­a­tions, in­tro­duc­ing new routes from Puer­to Ri­co and the British Vir­gin Is­lands, while strate­gic part­ner­ships with British Air­ways and KLM are ex­pand­ing the na­tion’s glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“These ef­forts are es­sen­tial to en­hanc­ing our ac­cess to North and South Amer­i­can mar­kets,” Im­bert not­ed, men­tion­ing on­go­ing plans to ac­quire ad­di­tion­al air­craft.

The Busi­ness Guardian took a deep­er dive in­to the monies al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts for the 2025 fis­cal year, which in­di­cat­ed that the min­istry’s al­lo­ca­tion in­creased by 5.6 per cent to $315.71 mil­lion over the re­vised es­ti­mate for 2024 of $298.83 mil­lion.

Per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture un­der both gen­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tion and cul­ture di­vi­sion es­ti­mat­ed at $9,410,200 and $3,521,000 re­spec­tive­ly in 2023, moved to an es­ti­mat­ed $9,158,000 and 3,995,900 re­spec­tive­ly in 2024.

Mi­nor equip­ment pur­chas­es that was es­ti­mat­ed at $199,000 in 2024 saw a de­crease in 2025 to $139,000.

In 2025, the trans­fers and sub­si­dies al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts to­tal $267.63 mil­lion, com­pared to the re­vised es­ti­mat­ed of $268.91 mil­lion in 2024. Trans­fers and sub­si­dies com­prise cur­rent trans­fers and sub­si­dies and cur­rent trans­fers to statu­to­ry boards and sim­i­lar bod­ies.

A fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion showed that in 2023, 83.9 per cent of to­tal re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture went to trans­fers and sub­si­dies. In 2024 that fig­ure was 85.23 per cent and in 2025 it slight­ly de­creased to 84.77 per cent.

In the last three years, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) re­ceived the largest share of the min­istry’s al­lo­ca­tion to dis­charge its le­gal man­date in the plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of Car­ni­val.

For 2025, NCC re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $140.54 mil­lion to run its op­er­a­tions for the fis­cal year, which ac­counts for 46.3 per cent of the min­istry’s to­tal re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to 2024 re­vised es­ti­mates, the NCC got $146.10 mil­lion while in 2023 that fig­ure was $146.37 mil­lion.

In the mid-year re­view in fis­cal 2024 the NCC was pro­vid­ed sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing in the amount of $5.3 mil­lion and its chair­man, Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters com­plained pub­licly about the need for greater al­lo­ca­tion for the host­ing of Car­ni­val,

The fig­ures for the Tourism Trinidad Des­ti­na­tion Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny re­mained more or less the same.

Tourism Trinidad Ltd, whose man­date is to mar­ket the coun­try as a tourism des­ti­na­tion, re­ceived a re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tion of $17 mil­lion for 2025. The com­pa­ny re­ceived an ac­tu­al al­lo­ca­tion of $17.84 mil­lion in 2023 and a re­vised es­ti­mate of $17 mil­lion for 2024.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell on his thoughts about this year’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

The min­is­ter de­scribed it as ad­e­quate, hav­ing re­gard to all the cir­cum­stances.

“While it’s ex­pect­ed that we could al­ways do with more, and that our stake­hold­ers will al­ways de­mand more, on bal­ance, we will make do with what we will re­ceive in the ap­pro­pri­a­tion and seek to max­imise our re­turns and sec­toral im­pact in 2025,” Mitchell added.

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein al­so shared his per­spec­tives on this coun­try’s tourism sec­tor while speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew Pro­gramme on Tues­day.

Stat­ing that the gov­ern­ment needs to do “much more work” in pro­mot­ing tourist ar­rivals to both Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ho­sein said, “Our tourism in­flows have not been do­ing well. We are prob­a­bly at the bot­tom on the ta­ble in the top three in the Caribbean in terms of tourism in­flows to T&T and how it has changed since 2019 and the lev­el of tourism in­flows.

“That’s a low hang­ing fruit in terms of overnight tourism and cruise ship tourism...we saw the sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go with the taxi dri­vers not com­ing out to work. We can’t have that again,” Ho­sein ad­vised as he em­pha­sised that tourism is an im­por­tant ve­hi­cle in bring­ing in much need­ed for­eign ex­change.

An­oth­er area, he not­ed, was boost­ing the di­as­po­ra, an­oth­er means of ob­tain­ing much need­ed forex.

“We need to cre­ate link­ages with our di­as­po­ra and in­crease for­eign ex­change in­to the coun­try both for the pur­pose of help­ing fam­i­lies with­in T&T who have fam­i­lies abroad and al­so for in­vest­ment pur­pose. We need to tar­get the di­as­po­ra for in­vest­ment funds with­in T&T,” Ho­sein added.

In Feb­ru­ary this year, Mitchell not­ed that for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od ac­cord­ing to da­ta of­fered by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, there was a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of seats made avail­able on flights to T&T.

“For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary, in terms of the max­i­mum seat ca­pac­i­ty com­ing in, from the var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions, we are see­ing a 47 per cent in­crease in 2024 for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary, over the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

“So by way of hard num­bers in 2023, we had a to­tal seat ca­pac­i­ty for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary of 122,760 seats in 2024 for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. We have seen that in­crease to 180,900 seats that are avail­able com­ing in­to the des­ti­na­tion of Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. We have seen an in­crease of 47 per cent,” the tourism min­is­ter said.

Mitchell al­so con­firmed that last year for Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, 784 air­craft ar­rived in this coun­try while 1,350 are ex­pect­ed in the coun­try for the cal­en­dar year, an in­crease of 72 per cent.

Cul­tur­al tourism is al­so gain­ing mo­men­tum, with the Na­tion­al Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment Bill recog­nis­ing the steel­pan and a $120 mil­lion in­vest­ment planned for Pan Trin­ba­go’s new head­quar­ters.

While these ef­forts are laud­able, Ho­sein said ad­vance­ment in tourism can­not be made if this coun­try’s mur­der rate con­tin­ues to re­main wor­ry­ing.

“This year we are on route to hav­ing the high­est mur­der rate ever record­ed,’ Ho­sein said adding, “And so the min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty has to be­come like a ju­nior min­is­ter of fi­nance be­cause bring­ing the mur­der lev­el un­der con­trol where the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would have much more con­fi­dence is a mech­a­nism in help­ing change in the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion.”