To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor is once again nav­i­gat­ing rough seas; this time caught be­tween frag­ile air­lift, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and grow­ing geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty.Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA), Regi­nald Mac Lean, has al­ready sound­ed the alarm on what he de­scribed as a sharply un­der­per­form­ing win­ter sea­son, which of­fi­cial­ly be­gan on Mon­day, De­cem­ber 15.

To­ba­go, he said, is re­ceiv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, but not in the vol­umes nor­mal­ly ex­pect­ed for the Christ­mas and New Year peak.
“What is hap­pen­ing in To­ba­go right now...we are get­ting for­eign tourism,” Mac Lean said. “We have the Ger­man flight on Con­dor and two flights out of Lon­don, but nei­ther of those three flights is be­ing filled. We have not filled our al­lo­ca­tion on the flights.”

The weak­ness ex­tends be­yond di­rect To­ba­go ser­vices. Mac Lean not­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al flights in­to Trinidad op­er­at­ed by car­ri­ers such as KLM, British Air­ways and Air Cana­da are al­so fail­ing to de­liv­er ex­pect­ed num­bers of To­ba­go-bound tourists. The New York ser­vice to To­ba­go re­mains a par­tic­u­lar con­cern.
“A lot of lo­cals, whether To­bag­on­ian or Trinida­di­an, are com­ing in on that flight,” he said.

“There’s not a lot of tourists com­ing on that.” He stat­ed that the sin­gle week­ly fre­quen­cy from New York lim­its To­ba­go’s ap­peal to short-stay US trav­ellers. “You need two flights to prop­er­ly pick up that mar­ket be­cause US pas­sen­gers gen­er­al­ly take three-, four- or five-day va­ca­tions.”
The re­sult is a win­ter sea­son run­ning well be­low his­tor­i­cal norms. Just three and a half months ago, To­ba­go ho­tels were re­port­ing Christ­mas and New Year oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els of around 76 per cent. Three and a half weeks ago, we were at 42 per cent,” MacLean said.

While some dates have since re­cov­ered in­to the 50s and low 70s, he stressed that this pe­ri­od “should be in the up­per 90s, if not close to 100 per cent.”
MacLean linked much of the de­cline to es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela and the re­sult­ing un­cer­tain­ty among in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers.

“Yes, trav­ellers are telling us there is a prob­lem, and yes, we are see­ing can­cel­la­tions be­cause of what went on with the US and Venezuela. That de­cline is be­ing seen through­out To­ba­go, and we are al­so hear­ing it from some ho­tel part­ners in Trinidad.”

Those con­cerns are echoed by Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, who said da­ta gath­ered di­rect­ly from hote­liers con­firm a sig­nif­i­cant drop in in­ter­na­tion­al book­ings.

“At my last meet­ing with the ho­tel as­so­ci­a­tion, mem­bers in­di­cat­ed that due to the ten­sion be­tween the US and Venezuela, there has def­i­nite­ly been a de­cline in book­ings,” Williams said.

“Some ho­tels are see­ing about a 34 per cent drop in in­ter­na­tion­al book­ings. Oth­ers re­port­ed loss­es of 15 per cent, while one in­di­cat­ed as much as 37 per cent.”
Williams said he sam­pled about five ho­tels and found a con­sis­tent pat­tern of can­cel­la­tions and re­duced for­ward book­ings. So I know I can say def­i­nite­ly, for sure, that there has been a drop in in­ter­na­tion­al book­ings due to the ten­sion be­tween the US and Venezuela,” he said.
While tourism is the most ex­posed sec­tor, Williams cau­tioned against view­ing To­ba­go’s econ­o­my sole­ly through that lens.

“If I look at the econ­o­my in To­ba­go as a whole, and not by sec­tor, there is a bit of slug­gish­ness,” he said. “In pre­vi­ous years, we were per­form­ing much bet­ter. For 2025, there is a slow­down hap­pen­ing in the To­ba­go space.”
Some ar­eas are hold­ing steady. Williams out­lined that the fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­mains rel­a­tive­ly healthy.

“The banks are look­ing good, the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies are talk­ing about pos­i­tive thing and the cred­it unions are al­so look­ing good,” he not­ed. Lend­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Christ­mas ex­pens­es, home re­pairs and per­son­al needs, has been fair­ly nor­mal for this time of year.

Con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty presents a mixed pic­ture. Large-scale projects are lim­it­ed, but vil­la con­struc­tion con­tin­ues across the is­land. “There is a lot of con­struc­tion go­ing on in terms of vil­las,” Williams said. Hard­ware busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, are re­port­ing most­ly av­er­age ac­tiv­i­ty, with one ma­jor con­straint loom­ing over the sec­tor.
“The forex is­sue is a se­ri­ous prob­lem,” Williams said. “Some busi­ness­es can­not im­port as they want to, and that is af­fect­ing small busi­ness­es and some con­struc­tion com­pa­nies re­al­ly, re­al­ly bad­ly.”

He warned that for­eign ex­change short­ages are now a cross-cut­ting is­sue for To­ba­go’s SMEs.

“Some­thing has to be done about the forex is­sue that is af­fect­ing SMEs in To­ba­go,” he said, adding that un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing sup­port mech­a­nisms such as Ex­im­bank has deep­ened con­cerns.

Oth­er sec­tors show pock­ets of re­silience. The mo­tor ve­hi­cle trade ap­pears sta­ble, with new ve­hi­cles vis­i­bly en­ter­ing the mar­ket. Food and bev­er­age busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly su­per­mar­kets, are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty as pub­lic ser­vants re­ceive their De­cem­ber salaries.

Still, Williams stressed that these sea­son­al upticks do not off­set the broad­er sense of eco­nom­ic lethar­gy.

“Over­all, To­ba­go has been a lit­tle slug­gish,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s di­rect­ly in­flu­enced by the US-Venezuela sit­u­a­tion, but I can see that the To­ba­go econ­o­my is not as vi­brant as in pre­vi­ous years.”

Back in the tourism sec­tor, Mac Lean warned that pro­longed weak­ness could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for ho­tel op­er­a­tors.

Fixed costs re­main high re­gard­less of oc­cu­pan­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly for coastal prop­er­ties. “Our elec­tric­i­ty bill re­mains con­stant whether we have one per­son in-house or 100 per­sons,” he said, point­ing to the need to run sys­tems con­tin­u­ous­ly in salt-air en­vi­ron­ments. Staffing costs fur­ther lim­it flex­i­bil­i­ty.

“If this con­tin­ues, yes, you are go­ing to see prop­er­ties go­ing out of busi­ness,” Mac Lean cau­tioned. Be­yond clo­sures, he raised con­cerns about de­ferred main­te­nance and the need for re­fur­bish­ment.

“If no mon­ey is com­ing in, prop­er­ties can­not be re­fur­bished. Then you can­not at­tract the mar­kets that re­quire a cer­tain star qual­i­ty.”

Both Mac Lean and Williams em­pha­sised that se­cu­ri­ty, while im­proved, re­mains crit­i­cal to restor­ing con­fi­dence. He not­ed that To­ba­go’s crime fig­ures are down by an es­ti­mat­ed 60 to 70 per cent year-on-year, cred­it­ing the po­lice lead­er­ship on the is­land for mak­ing To­ba­go safer.

Williams echoed that as­sess­ment, prais­ing the vis­i­ble pres­ence of po­lice, army and coast guard pa­trols, par­tic­u­lar­ly along the coast­line.

“To­ba­go’s bor­ders are very porous,” Williams said. “Those coastal pa­trols are ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son. I want to see them con­tin­ue.”
He al­so urged clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly around clos­ing times and cash move­ments.

“Po­lice need to un­der­stand the op­er­at­ing hours of busi­ness­es and in­ten­si­fy pa­trols in those ar­eas to give that cov­er­age,” he said.

Pol­i­cy de­ci­sions are al­so com­ing un­der scruti­ny. Mac Lean ar­gued that re­cent in­creas­es in al­co­hol du­ties have made To­ba­go less com­pet­i­tive re­gion­al­ly.

“We just be­came un­com­pet­i­tive with the rest of the Caribbean,” he said, not­ing that ho­tels and event op­er­a­tors locked in­to all-in­clu­sive con­tracts are un­able to pass on high­er costs.

As a longer-term so­lu­tion, Mac Lean pro­posed trans­form­ing To­ba­go in­to a du­ty-free is­land. “That would make prices cheap­er, al­low more peo­ple to come in, and in­crease for­eign ex­change in­flows,” he said. “If tourism goes up, Gov­ern­ment rev­enue goes up. It’s a win for every­body.”

Look­ing ahead, Williams said the pri­vate sec­tor is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic about 2026, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s in­creased bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with the THA and part­ner­ing with them to see pri­vate busi­ness im­prove,” he said. Key ex­pec­ta­tions in­clude the open­ing of the new air­port ter­mi­nal and in­creased air­lift, both seen as es­sen­tial to restor­ing in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand.

Williams al­so stressed the im­por­tance of in­volv­ing To­ba­go-based busi­ness­es in de­vel­op­ment plans.

“We are look­ing for­ward to see­ing the THA’s mul­ti-year plan so we can un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing and en­sure To­ba­go busi­ness­es are part of the de­vel­op­ment process,” he said. “Lo­cal com­pa­nies need to ben­e­fit from con­tracts and spin-offs from these projects.”

For now, To­ba­go’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty finds it­self once again nav­i­gat­ing un­cer­tain­ty. As Mac Lean put it, af­ter COVID-19, states of emer­gency and now geopo­lit­i­cal fall­out, “to face an­oth­er sea­son like this is very dif­fi­cult.” Whether im­proved air­lift, pol­i­cy ad­just­ments and clear­er glob­al sig­nals can steady the is­land’s econ­o­my re­mains the cen­tral ques­tion head­ing in­to 2026.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd has adopt­ed a cau­tious stance.

Act­ing CEO San­dra Orr-Toney said the agency does not yet have suf­fi­cient da­ta to make de­fin­i­tive state­ments on the broad­er im­pact of the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

She not­ed that as­sess­ments are un­der way to as­cer­tain the true ef­fect on book­ings, stress­ing that it re­mains a work in progress. The agency’s stat­ed in­tent is to con­tin­ue ac­knowl­edg­ing the sit­u­a­tion while en­sur­ing To­ba­go re­mains a wel­com­ing and ful­ly op­er­a­tional des­ti­na­tion.