An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The trans­porta­tion is­sue must be ad­dressed in To­ba­go to deal with the vol­ume of tourists for the cruise ship sea­son, which be­gan this month and runs till April 2024.

Cruise line agent, Charles Car­val­ho, ad­dressed the is­sue of in­ter­nal trans­porta­tion, fol­low­ing the dis­ap­point­ment of 300 tourists on board the in­au­gur­al ar­rival of the Celebri­ty Sil­hou­ette in Scar­bor­ough, who had their tours can­celled on Sat­ur­day, due to the non-ar­rival of maxi-taxis.

Car­val­ho told Guardian me­dia at the launch of the cruise ship sea­son at Cruise Ship Com­plex Port of Spain, yes­ter­day that fol­low­ing a cruise con­fer­ence re­cent­ly held in Mex­i­co, it was re­port­ed that the de­mand for tours by pas­sen­gers at the var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions has grown by 50 per cent.

“We are lack­ing trans­porta­tion in To­ba­go and one of the is­sues that was high­light­ed, is that on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, we have a re­li­gious is­sue with the maxi-taxi dri­vers, who will not come out to work, and to­day, you can­not go to pro­mote cruise ship busi­ness for Trinidad and To­ba­go and tell them not to berth on a week­end. It is not a good mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

“The cruise ship itin­er­aries are based on the speed, the dis­tance, and the time to get to your des­ti­na­tion. So, if To­ba­go is the next port of call, it is the next place of call and to try to get them to change that itin­er­ary, to not come on the week­end, the cruise line will just cut the des­ti­na­tion out or come and live with the prob­lem,” Car­val­ho ex­plained.

Speak­ing at the launch yes­ter­day morn­ing, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad (TTL), Car­la Cu­pid, said Trinidad ex­pects 41 cruise ship calls, rep­re­sent­ing a 51 per cent in­crease over the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

“These calls will be dis­trib­uted through­out the sea­son, with each month of­fer­ing a va­ri­ety of cruise ship vis­its. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance this sea­son is that we ex­pect to wel­come three new cruise lines and an un­prece­dent­ed sev­en in­au­gur­al calls, show­ing that in­ter­est in Trinidad as a cruise des­ti­na­tion is grow­ing,” Cu­pid re­marked.

TTL wel­comed the Ru­by Princess Cruise Line to Trinidad shores, with 800 pas­sen­gers.

Speak­ing to re­porters about safe­ty for pas­sen­gers when they dis­em­bark and en­ter the cap­i­tal city, Port-of-Spain may­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said while he can­not di­vulge the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, he did in­di­cate that his of­fice has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er stake­hold­ers to en­sure that all the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers are en­gaged in the safe­ty arrange­ments for the cruise ship sea­son.

On the is­sue of clean­ing up the city, Al­leyne not­ed that a city-wide clean-up cam­paign was launched over the week­end and will con­tin­ue for the rest of the year.

“It is some­thing that the coun­cil has put a lot of ef­fort in­to to en­sure this hap­pens, so that all our burgess­es and work­ers of the city can ex­pe­ri­ence a clean­er en­vi­ron­ment. So, the ef­fort is not just specif­i­cal­ly for the cruise ship sea­son, but our vis­i­tors would be one of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of it,” Al­leyne added.