BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be too quick to fol­low suit with a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in trav­el tax­es for Cari­com na­tion­als.

The fair­ly new ini­tia­tive tak­en by Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to boost tourism and trav­el in the re­gion, is not some­thing trav­el and tourism stake­hold­ers in T&T be­lieve could just be im­ple­ment­ed hur­ried­ly, as such a move could have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions and will in­volve “the wider pol­i­cy of the Gov­ern­ment.”

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, To­ba­go Tourism Agency CEO Louis Lewis ex­plained: “Ob­vi­ous­ly, if fares are low­ered to make it more af­ford­able for peo­ple, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that you could see trav­el in­crease. How­ev­er, in the case where we have a na­tion­al car­ri­er, a re­duc­tion in tax­es, tax rev­enue, has im­pli­ca­tions for one, Gov­ern­ment rev­enue and two the vi­a­bil­i­ty of Caribbean Air­lines.”

He said while the idea of the ini­tia­tive might sound good, there was a big­ger pic­ture be­yond just the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it may spur in­creased ar­rivals.

“It’s two sides of the coin that has to be looked at in its en­tire­ty,” he said.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Tourism Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell told Guardian Me­dia he need­ed to re­spond to the ques­tion or pos­si­bil­i­ty of such an ini­tia­tive, as com­plex is­sues and cir­cum­stances sur­round­ed such a move.

But a for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI’s St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight, did not share the sen­ti­ments of Lewis and Mitchell. He be­lieves such an ini­tia­tive would do some good for T&T and the wider Caribbean.

Knight, who is al­so an ac­tivist for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, said: “In or­der to en­cour­age re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, there has got to be more in­ter­est­ing is­land trav­el, not just for tourism and hol­i­days, but al­so for busi­ness and work.”

He said even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, in­tra-is­land trav­el should have been en­cour­aged but there was al­ways one thing that stood in the way—cost.

“The chal­lenge is that in­ter-is­land air trav­el tends to be too ex­pen­sive. So we could do one or two things: in­crease the com­pe­ti­tion by hav­ing more air­line op­tions, thus re­duc­ing costs of flights; do what Bar­ba­dos has done and re­duce tax­es on flights for Cari­com cit­i­zens, or in­vest in fer­ries for in­ter-is­land hop­ing,” he ad­vised.

He said an­oth­er op­tion was the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of sea­planes, which can at­tract a younger de­mo­graph­ic of trav­ellers and ad­ven­tur­ous peo­ple.

In Au­gust 2020, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley an­nounced her gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to re­duce trav­el tax­es.

Mot­t­ley, in a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view in her then ca­pac­i­ty as Cari­com chair, had spo­ken of the se­vere hit the Caribbean’s tourism and trav­el sec­tor had tak­en due to the pan­dem­ic.

“The Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty is the most trav­elled and trade-de­pen­dent re­gion in the world. In many in­stances in our com­mu­ni­ty, coun­tries de­pend on tourism to the ex­tent of al­most 40 to 50 per cent of the GDP, both di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly,” she had ex­plained.

On June 28, the gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da took the same po­si­tion, with Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Brown im­ple­ment­ing a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in tax­es on air­line tick­ets for trav­el.

Browne, who al­so as­sumed chair­man­ship of Cari­com on Ju­ly 1, not­ed the ini­tia­tive, which took ef­fect in sev­er­al coun­tries of the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, would last for six months in the first in­stance.