An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TIATT) Lisa Shandilya says this coun­try’s tourism sec­tor must move be­yond plan­ning and act faster if it wants to com­pete in an in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal and fast-mov­ing glob­al mar­ket.

Speak­ing at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s Tourism 2026 fo­rum last week, Shandilya said the tourism land­scape was be­ing re­shaped by dig­i­tal in­flu­ences, strate­gic part­ner­ships, au­then­tic sto­ry­telling and da­ta-dri­ven mar­ket­ing.

“The des­ti­na­tions that win are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the biggest. The win­ners are the most ag­ile, the most con­nect­ed, the most au­then­tic and the most co­or­di­nat­ed,” she said.

Shandilya said the as­so­ci­a­tion had spent the last three months en­gag­ing diplo­mat­ic mis­sions and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to ex­plore new tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties, cul­tur­al ex­changes and mar­ket ac­cess for T&T.
She re­vealed that dis­cus­sions were al­so un­der­way with air­lines, whole­salers and tourism mar­keters as part of ef­forts to un­lock new source mar­kets and strength­en air­lift in­to the coun­try.

The TIATT pres­i­dent al­so stressed the im­por­tance of align­ment be­tween the pri­vate sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment.
She said the as­so­ci­a­tion re­cent­ly met with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism to bet­ter un­der­stand Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties and iden­ti­fy ar­eas where the pri­vate sec­tor could sup­port sus­tain­able tourism de­vel­op­ment.

Shandilya added that TIATT al­so con­tributed rec­om­men­da­tions and stake­hold­er feed­back dur­ing Tourism Trinidad Ltd’s re­cent busi­ness plan­ning ex­er­cise.

Among the pro­pos­als put for­ward was the cre­ation of a ver­i­fied tourism stake­hold­er reg­istry aligned with the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act. She de­scribed the reg­istry as crit­i­cal to build­ing a safer and more struc­tured tourism in­dus­try.

Shandilya al­so ad­dressed con­cerns af­fect­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion providers in the re­gion, in­clud­ing high com­mis­sion fees charged by on­line book­ing plat­forms and the grow­ing in­flu­ence of short-term rental op­er­a­tors.
Through the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA), she said TIATT had raised is­sues in­volv­ing book­ing.com and called for bal­anced pol­i­cy treat­ment for Airbnb.

“We must pro­tect both our in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors and our le­git­i­mate tax-pay­ing tourism stake­hold­ers,” she said.

Shandilya point­ed to the re­cent vis­it by in­ter­net per­son­al­i­ty iShowSpeed as an ex­am­ple of the pow­er of in­flu­encer-dri­ven tourism mar­ket­ing.
She de­scribed the vis­it as one of the most im­pact­ful des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing mo­ments T&T had ex­pe­ri­enced in years.

“The re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty was not just the live stream. It was the da­ta be­hind it,” she said.

Shandilya warned that tourism op­por­tu­ni­ties linked to vi­ral ex­po­sure now have a very short shelf life.

“In to­day’s dig­i­tal land­scape, the win­dow for con­vert­ing that kind of at­ten­tion in­to ac­tu­al book­ings is no longer mea­sured in years. It is mea­sured in weeks. Some­times even days,” she added.