For the sec­ond year in a row, East­er week­end proved to be a mas­sive busi­ness boost for ho­tels and guest hous­es in To­ba­go.

Ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that over 60,000 vis­i­tors were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on the is­land over the course of the long week­end, and the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion boast­ed to the me­dia over the week­end that most ho­tels, guest hous­es and vil­las were at full ca­pac­i­ty.

One such ho­tel with full oc­cu­pan­cy over the week­end was the Mount Irvine Bay Re­sort. Gen­er­al man­ag­er for the pop­u­lar To­ba­go Ho­tel, Al­pha Lorde said the  ho­tel’s high oc­cu­pan­cy over the week­end was not borne out of re­newed in­ter­est in the sec­tor fol­low­ing the lift­ing of re­stric­tions on April 4, but rather a pre-planned event.

How­ev­er he did note the sec­tor had seen a slight boost since re­stric­tions were re­moved.

“It’s been slow but steady since the lift­ing of re­stric­tions.

“For­tu­nate­ly for us, we had a par­tic­u­lar event at the ho­tel for East­er week­end which was planned since Jan­u­ary that utilised all of our ac­com­mo­da­tion re­sources that was avail­able. And that was a pri­vate event. So as a re­sult of that we were not chal­lenged in terms of ac­com­mo­da­tion,” he said.

“And we didn’t have to go out there and look for busi­ness. I can’t say if we have that sit­u­a­tion, what our oc­cu­pan­cy would have looked like.”

Out­side of that event, over­all the feed­back with­in the sec­tor had been pos­i­tive with many ex­pe­ri­enc­ing their best re­turn since the pan­dem­ic be­gan.

“I think over­all, the is­land had a strong long week­end and with the lift­ing of re­stric­tions as I said it is slow but steady and I think we are see­ing a nat­ur­al de­vel­op­ment of, I don’t want to say re­turn to pre-pan­dem­ic oc­cu­pan­cies. But at least get­ting be­yond the sin­gle dig­its or low dou­ble oc­cu­pan­cy fig­ures, we’re get­ting that,” he said.

Lorde not­ed there were con­cerns about the lim­it­ed num­ber of flights as he felt Caribbean Air­lines’ sched­ule re­duced po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties for small­er ho­tels and guest hous­es on the is­land.

“Yeah, be­cause al­though they an­nounced in­creased flights to To­ba­go a cou­ple of weeks ago, re­mem­ber, most per­sons would have made the ac­com­mo­da­tion plans months in ad­vance, or at least longer than two weeks ago. Peo­ple who make a last minute or short no­tice de­ci­sions gen­er­al­ly stay in small­er prop­er­ties. So I think the no­ti­fi­ca­tion came a bit late,” he said. 

“I be­lieve they should have been a cou­ple of months ear­li­er, in­di­cat­ing that they would be adding these ad­di­tion­al flights. I think it would have al­lowed the ho­tels to make bet­ter plans, as well as work with oth­er trav­el part­ners or oth­er trav­el agents to­wards se­cur­ing more ac­com­mo­da­tion.”

Over at Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort, the week­end was al­so a suc­cess. Like Mt Irvine, the re­sort was al­so boost­ed by the To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny stag­ing Bit­ter Cas­sa­va at the re­sort. Gen­er­al man­ag­er Vin­od Ba­jaj de­scribed the week­end as very smooth and fan­tas­tic.

 “We had a very good week­end, Fri­day, Sat­ur­day, Sun­day, even Mon­day, was good. We are thank­ful we had a great week­end. Every­thing went as planned.

“For the team, the ser­vice point of view, we were right on the mon­ey. So I think over­all very good ex­pe­ri­ence. I think it was a good East­er. The best I’ve seen to be hon­est with you, very, very flaw­less for us. Per­son­al­ly, I had few­er headaches,” Ba­jaj.

Not­ing the vast ma­jor­i­ty of vis­i­tors to the ho­tel were Trinida­di­ans, he con­firmed the re­sort had been in talks with Caribbean Air­lines to ex­pand their part­ner­ship.

Last week the air­line an­nounced the restart of di­rect flights from To­ba­go to New York and men­tioned plans to in­clude pack­ages at the ho­tel.

“We have been part­ner­ing with  Caribbean  Air­line in the lo­cal mar­ket so we are ex­tend­ing that re­la­tion­ship. We are thank­ful for that. So we’ll be work­ing to­geth­er. So we wait to hear.  For that we’ll be do­ing some joint mar­ket­ing and sell­ing pack­ages,” Ba­jaj said, “So we’re go­ing to try to mar­ket that to­geth­er. And get some more guests to To­ba­go, which is need­ed bad­ly.”

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Unique Bed and Break­fast and Self-Cater­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Kay Trot­man said the week­end was a step in the right di­rec­tion de­spite her mem­ber­ship hav­ing vary­ing oc­cu­pan­cy from as low as  25 per­cent  to 100 per cent, with most av­er­ag­ing about 50 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy.

“Well in terms of over the last, the last two years this was a tremen­dous im­prove­ment so to speak. So folks are gen­er­al­ly pleased be­cause they do have some de­gree of busi­ness. They’re gen­er­al­ly pleased with the lev­el of oc­cu­pan­cy that they have got­ten, giv­en that the econ­o­my just for tourism, at least for To­ba­go, had just re­cent­ly opened up and that noth­ing was ma­jor planned be­fore the East­er week­end as such,” she said.

Trot­man added that her mem­bers were tak­ing “a favourable out­look that things would con­tin­ue to pick up as we go along,” adding that this was al­so a boost for these busi­ness­es which pre­vi­ous­ly would have looked to events like the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val for in­creased busi­ness. As a re­sult, there was some cu­rios­i­ty as to what the planned To­ba­go Car­ni­val in Oc­to­ber could bring.

“I think what the mem­bers are look­ing for­ward to, is prob­a­bly a re­vived or re­newed cal­en­dar of events for To­ba­go and prob­a­bly look­ing to see if with the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the state and the pri­vate sec­tor, if we can come up with at least one ma­jor event every month that can pull peo­ple to­wards To­ba­go. So Car­ni­val, we had noth­ing ma­jor in Oc­to­ber, and Oc­to­ber was sort of a wan­ing month be­fore the De­cem­ber hype. They’re look­ing for­ward to that,” she said.

Over in Trinidad, the ma­jor ho­tels al­so did see an  uptick in ac­tiv­i­ty over the long week­end. While both the Hy­att Re­gency and the Hilton Trinidad could not pro­vide num­bers, of­fi­cials from both not­ed in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty.

“In gen­er­al it was live­ly as for some peo­ple but the al­tar was not full com­plete­ly. But yes, we had peo­ple and it was good to see fam­i­lies back in en­joy­ing “ said Hilton gen­er­al man­ag­er Olivi­er Mau­maire.

How­ev­er like the To­ba­go hote­liers, he too found the progress since re­stric­tions was slow.

“It’s slow, but it’s start­ing. You can see the move­ment, but it’s just not like all of a sud­den every­body’s out but yes, it is com­ing back lit­tle by lit­tle,” he said,” In gen­er­al, it’s kind of a slow re­cov­ery like in lo­cal busi­ness in gen­er­al. But at least you see some trends go­ing up, it just slow but it’s com­ing up.”