The Trinidad Ho­tels Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA) says larg­er prop­er­ties (100 rooms and over) are achiev­ing 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy while most of the in­de­pen­dent small­er prop­er­ties (un­der 100 rooms) are trend­ing be­tween 85 per cent to 100 per cent over this Car­ni­val week.

In a me­dia re­lease on the is­sue of oc­cu­pan­cy rates for the sea­son, the THRTA said: “Based on pack­ages mar­ket­ed, hote­liers are re­port­ing av­er­age the length-of-stay (by guests) rang­ing be­tween five to eight days and no ma­jor can­cel­la­tions have been not­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od lead­ing up to Car­ni­val week.

“A few of our mem­ber ho­tel prop­er­ties in East Trinidad (in the prox­im­i­ty of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port) are re­port­ing oc­cu­pan­cy trends of 90-100 per cent dur­ing this up­com­ing week.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so said there con­tin­ues to be grow­ing in­stances of home-shar­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Port-of-Spain area, ei­ther di­rect­ly or through plat­forms like Airbnb, with pri­vate home-own­ers list­ing their prop­er­ties on dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions and ac­com­mo­dat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors in their homes. How­ev­er, the THRTA warned about this trend, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment could lose out on rev­enue.

“If this con­tin­ues unchecked, there is the re­al po­ten­tial for on­go­ing tax­a­tion leak­age, in­creased for­eign ex­change hoard­ing and des­ti­na­tion rep­u­ta­tion­al risk.

“The THRTA be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment has the pri­ma­ry role to cre­ate a lev­el play­ing field and en­sure all forms of ac­com­mo­da­tion in Trinidad are reg­is­tered, op­er­at­ing with min­i­mum health and safe­ty stan­dards and con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my via tax­a­tion pay­ments.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so said with re­spect to an­nu­alised oc­cu­pan­cy rates over the past three years, the THRTA us­es re­ports from Smith Trav­el Re­port (STR) (in­ter­na­tion­al da­ta col­lec­tion agency) to mea­sure and mon­i­tor oc­cu­pan­cy da­ta from ho­tels in Trinidad.

It not­ed that the con­tribut­ing da­ta in this re­port is de­rived from 1,500 (or 60 per cent) of the 2,500 ho­tel and guest house rooms with­in Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad (main­ly based in Port-of-Spain).

The THRTA not­ed that it is chal­leng­ing the Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed and the Min­istry of Tourism to move to­wards re­sum­ing the pro­mo­tion and mar­ket­ing of Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad, which has been non-ex­is­tent over the past two years, through di­rect en­gage­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with na­tion­al tourism stake­hold­ers and the fund­ing of the al­lo­ca­tions al­ready pro­vid­ed for these pro­grammes in the na­tion­al bud­get 2018/2019.