Gail Alexan­der

Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers are be­ing urged to use T&T’s new link with KLM Air­lines to ex­port the Car­ni­val in­dus­try to the Rot­ter­dam Car­ni­val and jobs will be open­ing up ahead with ho­tel con­struc­tion and op­er­a­tions.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell in­di­cat­ed this in yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the 2022 Bud­get.

Not­ing the re­cent re­sump­tion of KLM Air­lines to T&T af­ter a 20-year ab­sence, Mitchell said the TT-Am­s­ter­dam route will open pos­si­bil­i­ties for mar­ket ex­pan­sion, trade and tourism to the Nether­lands and sur­round­ing ar­eas. This in­cludes West Africa and In­dia.

The win­ter flights ahead will of­fer the po­ten­tial to mar­ket Car­ni­val and T&T’s sea, sun and sand of­fer­ings to Eu­rope.

Part of the Min­istry’s thrust—im­prov­ing its Car­ni­val of­fer­ings—in­cludes a fo­cus on at­tract­ing vis­i­tors for a Band Launch sea­son.

Mitchell en­cour­aged Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers to link with the Rot­ter­dam Car­ni­val and de­vel­op T&T’s Car­ni­val po­ten­tial there and “ex­port our cul­ture, Car­ni­val work­ers, artistes and mu­si­cians to Rot­ter­dam Car­ni­val. Mitchell said lo­cal artistes will con­tin­ue to be en­cour­aged to be cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors.

“The US does it, Ja­maica does it and T&T must al­so.”

Among mar­ket­ing T&T fes­ti­vals, work will be done with the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee to link with the US’ June­teenth ob­ser­vances. The lat­ter is the US June 19 hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate the eman­ci­pa­tion of en­slaved peo­ple. T&T mis­sions over­seas will work with di­as­po­ra pop­u­la­tions to mar­ket T&T al­so.

He said a lot of hope is ex­pect­ed for To­ba­go tourism go­ing for­ward with pri­vate sec­tor ho­tels. By 2025 some 852 new high-qual­i­ty rooms are ex­pect­ed with 1,000 new jobs in op­er­at­ing of the Mar­riot re­sort and Com­fort Inn plus with the new ANR Robin­son air­port ter­mi­nal.

He said 750 will be em­ployed in the con­struc­tion of the Mar­riott’s 200 rooms, vil­las and con­do­mini­ums.

Al­so, 250 peo­ple from To­ba­go will be trained to work there. The four-star project be­ing done by a lo­cal con­sor­tium - Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels at Rocky Point costs $500m, Mitchell not­ed Mar­riot is the largest ho­tel brand glob­al­ly and To­ba­go will ben­e­fit from its mar­ket­ing reach. Com­fort Inn will be open be­fore year-end. Radis­son opens next year.

Con­struc­tion be­gins in Jan­u­ary for the Hamp­ton by Hilton at Pi­ar­co. This in­volves 250 work­ers with 70 oth­ers when the ho­tel be­comes op­er­a­tional. The 103 room ho­tel costs $65m.