Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is now invit­ing peo­ple to trav­el across to the is­land every long week­end. 

And to en­sure trav­ellers can get there, Au­gus­tine is plan­ning to meet with Caribbean Air­lines of­fi­cials to dis­cuss more flights to the is­land.

“We say­ing to peo­ple far and wide, To­ba­go is open for busi­ness. Come make To­ba­go the place for va­ca­tion. This year has sev­er­al long week­ends. Don’t waste a long week­end, every long week­end come to To­ba­go,” he said at Tues­day’s Taste of Buc­coo event, which saw the re­turn of the is­land’s icon­ic goat and crab rac­ing. 

Au­gus­tine said the event cost the THA be­tween $300,000 and $400,000 to put on. 

“That’s in­clu­sive of the prices, prepar­ing the venue, all the in­fra­struc­ture work, the tents and all of those things,” he said.

He said the THA took over the fes­ti­val for this year on­ly as the Buc­coo Vil­lage Coun­cil was not in a po­si­tion due to the last-minute de­ci­sion to hold it. 

Giv­en the favourable re­sponse to the fes­ti­val, he said he was op­ti­mistic about the is­land’s car­ni­val set for Oc­to­ber 2022. This, he said, will ben­e­fit the is­land’s econ­o­my.

“Once things con­tin­ue as is now, we could see the re­turn of tourism to num­bers that we have not seen be­fore. That is the goal. Tourism was on the de­cline for a num­ber of years and we’re hop­ing that now, every­body wants to come to To­ba­go be­cause COVID did a num­ber on us,” he said.

To as­sist in this goal, Au­gus­tine said he is sched­uled to meet with Caribbean Air­lines lat­er this week to dis­cuss in­creas­ing air­bridge ca­pac­i­ty.

“I am adamant that we have to re­turn to pre-COVID num­ber of flights, which in­cludes a very late flight, late in the day. So we’re push­ing for that,” he said.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, what we plan to dis­cuss with Caribbean Air­lines, is Caribbean Air­lines tak­ing up some of our source mar­kets. We pay tens of mil­lions to Vir­gin and BA (British Air­ways) to bring these flights from the UK and quite frankly, we are re­view­ing whether that’s the best eco­nom­i­cal de­ci­sion and whether we should re­tain one of those flights from the UK (ei­ther British Air­ways or Vir­gin At­lantic) and that we use Caribbean Air­lines, our lo­cal air­line, to pro­vide some of these runs in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

He said this will al­low mon­ey to stay with­in the econ­o­my by not hav­ing to source for­eign ex­change to pay an in­ter­na­tion­al air­line to do what the lo­cal one can. 

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS