Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL) launched its Tourism-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Pro­gramme (TOPS) for po­lice, im­mi­gra­tion, cus­toms and oth­er front­line law en­force­ment of­fi­cials in re­sponse to the crit­i­cal need to en­sure vis­i­tors’ first im­pres­sions are pos­i­tive and mem­o­rable up­on en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the TTL, the aim of the five-day pro­gramme, which be­gan on Ju­ly 8 and suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed on Ju­ly 12, was to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er port of en­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives with the req­ui­site knowl­edge, skills and at­ti­tudes to en­hance the im­age of Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad by pro­vid­ing a safe, se­cure and en­joy­able en­vi­ron­ment for our in­ter­na­tion­al guests, while bring­ing an in­creased aware­ness of their col­lec­tive and in­di­vid­ual roles with­in the tourism in­dus­try and its de­vel­op­ment.

The TTL added that the TOPS train­ing ini­tia­tive fa­cil­i­tates the em­pow­er­ment of stake­hold­ers – es­pe­cial­ly state agen­cies—through the pro­vi­sion of well-de­signed pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes to en­sure the op­ti­mal con­tri­bu­tion of the tourism in­dus­try to na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

The state­ment said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Acad­e­my, head­ed by Dr Si­mon Alex­is, cus­tom de­signed the TOPS pro­gramme, which is aimed at el­e­vat­ing the Trinidad tourism ex­pe­ri­ence. The train­ing in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing mod­ules: In­tro­duc­tion to Tourism Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing, Cus­tomer Ex­pe­ri­ence, Tourism Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty, Crime Pre­ven­tion Tech­niques, and the Law En­force­ment Of­fi­cer as an Am­bas­sador.

Com­ment­ing on the work­shop, Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed chair­man Cliff Hamil­ton un­der­scored the crit­i­cal need for “all in the tourism in­dus­try to em­brace new ap­proach­es to con­duct­ing busi­ness as we nav­i­gate our re­cov­ery through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. It is an im­per­a­tive now for us to fo­cus on mem­o­rable vis­i­tor and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and in­creas­ing the val­ue-added as­pect of the tourism busi­ness. In­di­vid­u­als now face a vast ar­ray of trav­el op­tions. The pre­ferred op­tion will al­ways be one that de­liv­ers ex­cep­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ences at great prices.”

In her open­ing re­marks, Shaneil Suther­land, Des­ti­na­tion De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er of TTL, said “Gov­ern­ment has iden­ti­fied the tourism in­dus­try as a key dri­ver to gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and di­ver­si­fy the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

“We, at Tourism Trinidad, are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing ad­vanced pro­fes­sion­al ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing to en­sure a high-qual­i­ty trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence for our in­ter­na­tion­al guests and to main­tain a sus­tain­able and vi­able in­dus­try,” Suther­land said.

Tourism Trinidad said over the next few months, it will be rolling out new skills up­grade pro­grammes, as it has iden­ti­fied the need to re­tain with­in the in­dus­try key tal­ent and de­vel­op lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ty to re­ju­ve­nate busi­ness­es for re­cov­ery and growth. Some of the up­com­ing train­ing in­cludes cus­tomer care, dig­i­tal skills, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and strate­gic plan­ning and man­age­ment.