T&T’s cruise sec­tor is fac­ing a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, with the 2024/2025 sea­son show­ing a steep drop in ar­rivals.

Da­ta from vet­er­an cruise agent Charles Car­val­ho re­vealed that Port-of-Spain han­dled just 12 cruise calls—down sharply from 37 in the 2023/2024 sea­son.

To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced an even more dra­mat­ic de­cline, falling from 67 calls to on­ly 21 over the same pe­ri­od.

Pro­jec­tions for the 2025/2026 sea­son point to an im­prove­ment for To­ba­go with 33 cruise calls ex­pect­ed. But Trinidad is ex­pect­ed to 10 cruise calls in the cur­rent cruise sea­son, which is a slight de­cline from the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

Ear­ly fore­casts for 2026/2027 in­di­cate fur­ther a bit of in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty, as Trinidad is es­ti­mat­ed to wel­come 13 cruise ships and To­ba­go is pro­ject­ed to see 30 calls.

This coun­try’s cruise sea­son of­fi­cial­ly starts in No­vem­ber and April the fol­low­ing year marks the ends.

In tak­ing a clos­er look at the da­ta, Car­val­ho, who has served the in­dus­try for 41 years, said the drop was not sur­pris­ing as he viewed it as a con­se­quence of long-stand­ing struc­tur­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive prob­lems that have nev­er been ad­dressed.

A com­bi­na­tion of es­ca­lat­ing op­er­at­ing costs, in­con­sis­tent pol­i­cy sup­port and a lack of strate­gic mar­ket­ing have erod­ed the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness at a time when cruise lines are tight­en­ing itin­er­aries and trim­ming fu­el con­sump­tion to meet new emis­sions rules, he ex­plained.

Pric­ing shocks al­so have made a bad year worse.

For in­stance, Car­val­ho said bus­es hired for cruise tours in To­ba­go have raised their rates by about 40 per cent, while sim­i­lar ser­vices in Trinidad have in­creased about 10 per cent.

These spikes, he added, have re­duced the des­ti­na­tion’s com­pet­i­tive­ness es­pe­cial­ly when cruise lines are ag­gres­sive­ly man­ag­ing costs across their net­works.

Be­yond costs, itin­er­ary de­sign and en­vi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance are re­shap­ing cruise de­ci­sions.

Car­val­ho fur­ther stat­ed cruise lines have tight­ened sched­ules and short­ened sail­ing dis­tances to meet emis­sions tar­gets and cut fu­el burn.

Ge­og­ra­phy mat­ters: Trinidad, at the south­ern end of the Caribbean chain, is a longer sail, par­tic­u­lar­ly for East­ern Caribbean cir­cuits.

To­ba­go, mean­while, ben­e­fits from ge­og­ra­phy: many ships tran­sit­ing be­tween the East­ern Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca use To­ba­go as a con­ve­nient in­ter­me­di­ate stop, with routes like To­ba­go to Dev­il’s Is­land tak­ing rough­ly three days’ sail­ing.

That con­ve­nience, Car­val­ho said, is why To­ba­go is hold­ing steady even as Trinidad stum­bles.

He al­so point­ed to a cost stack that is out of step with re­gion­al cruise norms.

Pas­sen­gers al­ready pay a US$5 head tax to dis­em­bark; on top of that, tour op­er­a­tors are charged rough­ly US$1.50 to US$2.00 per pas­sen­ger to take those same vis­i­tors on tours—a prac­tice Car­val­ho called “dou­ble tax­a­tion” that he hasn’t seen else­where.

“The on­ly coun­try in the world charg­ing that tax is Trinidad. It’s a tour op­er­a­tion fee. The on­ly port in the world charg­ing that fee. It’s a dou­ble tax­a­tion. It’s like Pi­ar­co say­ing we have a de­par­ture tax but with Caribbean Air­lines say­ing be­fore you come on­to the plane you have to pay me an­oth­er tax be­cause I’m tak­ing you up. That has to stop,” Car­val­ho as­sert­ed.

The in­dus­try al­so cur­rent­ly suf­fers from a lack of brand recog­ni­tion.

In tak­ing the in­dus­try for­ward, Car­val­ho sug­gest­ed mar­ket­ing as the miss­ing pil­lar.

“The cruise lines them­selves tell me the pas­sen­gers don’t re­al­ly know where Trinidad is. It’s the pas­sen­gers who push the des­ti­na­tion, not the cruise lines. What they need is a mar­ket­ing ef­fort from the des­ti­na­tion to show that you are do­ing good.”

He ar­gues that Trinidad missed a win­dow when the coun­try was fre­quent­ly in in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines due to de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela.

“That was the time to mar­ket the coun­try—peo­ple were fi­nal­ly see­ing where you are on the map. It would have cost less to act then than it will cost now,” he added.

Fur­ther, Car­val­ho in­sist­ed that cruise lines do not dis­like Port-of-Spain as a des­ti­na­tion, but they do take is­sue with the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. “

“When pas­sen­gers step off in oth­er is­lands, they see beach­es, board­walks, en­ter­tain­ment ar­eas. When they step off in Trinidad, they see cranes, con­tain­ers, and in­dus­tri­al car­go op­er­a­tions. It doesn’t feel like a Caribbean hol­i­day port,” he stat­ed.

Car­val­ho fur­ther not­ed that med­ical tourism has the po­ten­tial to be­come a sig­nif­i­cant in­come gen­er­a­tor for the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly when vis­it­ing crew mem­bers re­quire ma­jor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures.

A sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er, Car­val­ho con­tend­ed, is weak com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween in­dus­try vet­er­ans and of­fi­cials.

He said his at­tempts to brief Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment, and Tourism, have fall­en flat.

Ac­cord­ing to Car­val­ho, he sent pro­pos­als, re­quest­ed meet­ings, and even arranged a lunch on board a ship for a prac­ti­cal, on-the-ground view of how the busi­ness works.

The meet­ing was can­celled, he said, and no re­place­ment was set.

Car­val­ho added there was no re­sponse to his fol­low-up emails.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Ma­haraj but calls and What­sApp mes­sages to the min­is­ter went unan­swered.

De­spite the cur­rent head­winds, Car­val­ho be­lieves T&T still has every­thing cruise pas­sen­gers want—cul­ture, cui­sine, na­ture, mu­sic and her­itage—and that To­ba­go’s ge­og­ra­phy pro­vides a nat­ur­al foun­da­tion to re­build vol­umes— but un­less costs drop and gen­uine part­ner­ships form, the coun­try would con­tin­ue los­ing ground to its Caribbean neigh­bours.

The To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is seek­ing clar­i­ty fol­low­ing re­ports that taxi fares charged to cruise ship vis­i­tors may have re­cent­ly in­creased.

Pres­i­dent Cur­tis Williams told the Busi­ness Guardian that it was nei­ther con­sult­ed nor no­ti­fied be­fore­hand about any pro­posed ad­just­ment to rates as­so­ci­at­ed with the is­land’s cruise op­er­a­tions. As a re­sult, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said it is still try­ing to un­der­stand the cir­cum­stances that led to the re­port­ed change.

“As such, we do not have clar­i­ty on the spe­cif­ic fac­tors that trig­gered the in­crease. To­ba­go’s cruise sec­tor is a del­i­cate and high­ly com­pet­i­tive space and pric­ing de­ci­sions—par­tic­u­lar­ly those af­fect­ing first-time vis­i­tors—must be han­dled care­ful­ly to avoid un­in­tend­ed neg­a­tive per­cep­tions of the des­ti­na­tion,” Williams ex­plained.

With many cruise pas­sen­gers set­ting foot on the is­land for the first time, pric­ing de­ci­sions can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence their over­all im­pres­sion of the des­ti­na­tion. Williams al­so em­pha­sised that sud­den or un­ex­plained in­creas­es risk un­in­ten­tion­al­ly shap­ing a nar­ra­tive that To­ba­go is be­com­ing less ac­ces­si­ble or less vis­i­tor-friend­ly, an out­come it hopes to avoid.

As such Williams ad­vised that the sit­u­a­tion high­lights the need for more struc­tured com­mu­ni­ca­tion among the key agen­cies and groups in­volved in cruise fa­cil­i­ta­tion.

“We be­lieve this mat­ter un­der­scores the need for struc­tured di­a­logue and co­or­di­na­tion among key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the taxi as­so­ci­a­tions, cruise op­er­a­tors, port au­thor­i­ties, tourism ser­vice providers and the To­ba­go Tourism Agency,” he fur­ther sug­gest­ed warn­ing that with­out co­or­di­na­tion im­por­tant de­ci­sions may be made in iso­la­tion, leav­ing oth­er stake­hold­ers un­pre­pared for the po­ten­tial im­pact.

The cham­ber is propos­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive meet­ing to al­low stake­hold­ers to ex­am­ine the is­sue to­geth­er to:

Un­der­stand what is dri­ving cost in­creas­es

As­sess the im­pact on vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ence and des­ti­na­tion com­pet­i­tive­ness

Ex­plore fair, trans­par­ent and sus­tain­able pric­ing struc­tures

En­sure To­ba­go re­mains wel­com­ing, af­ford­able and well-po­si­tioned in the re­gion­al cruise mar­ket.

Reaf­firm­ing its role as a part­ner in To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, Williams re­it­er­at­ed the cham­ber is ready to sup­port any ini­tia­tive aimed at im­prov­ing co­or­di­na­tion and strength­en­ing the is­land’s tourism rep­u­ta­tion.