Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Core­spon­dent

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­pha Lord says his as­so­ci­a­tion ex­pects a 60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rate over­all for the up­com­ing Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view over the week­end, Lord said this rep­re­sent­ed an alarm­ing 40 per cent de­cline in some ar­eas when com­pared to the is­land’s oc­cu­pan­cy rate in 2023, where the as­so­ci­a­tion record­ed a up to 100 per cent rate for the in­au­gur­al Car­ni­val.

In 2022, some ho­tels, vil­las and guest­hous­es record­ed 76 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy while most were com­plete­ly booked, he said.

How­ev­er, when it comes to the cur­rent sta­tus of ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy for this year’s To­ba­go Car­ni­val, Lord said small­er prop­er­ties are ex­pect­ed to see a drop in oc­cu­pan­cy first, while larg­er prop­er­ties are cur­rent­ly at the 20-25 per cent range.

This year, To­ba­go will host its Car­ni­val from Oc­to­ber 27-29.

“So, the small­er prop­er­ties are go­ing to fall out first be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly, they have less oc­cu­pan­cy. I know of a cou­ple prop­er­ties that are say­ing to me they’re sold out al­ready. So the big prop­er­ties, I think they’re prob­a­bly in the 20-25 per cent range right now. As an is­land, I am hope­ful that as a des­ti­na­tion, we will get to the end and say we’ve done 55-60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy av­er­age across the floor.”

Is­sues on the seabridge, as well as the lack of ad­ver­tise­ment and avail­abil­i­ty of Caribbean Air­lines flights and fer­ry sail­ings are ma­jor fac­tors be­hind this pre­dic­tion, Lord not­ed.

He said, “We have peo­ple who are say­ing we don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion or we don’t have enough con­fi­dence. Whether it be the flight sit­u­a­tion is go­ing to be suf­fi­cient and ca­pa­ble. The sealift and air­lift has al­ways been a con­cern. But there’s al­so the ques­tion of how much mar­ket and how much is go­ing in­to pro­mot­ing the Car­ni­val in the Trinidad space. How much con­fi­dence the Trinidad mas play­ers who trav­el the world have to play mas in the To­ba­go. So all of those things are go­ing to af­fect my mem­bers.”

He said the re­cent pulling of the Cabo Star from the seabridge for re­pairs fol­low­ing a fire has not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed the ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy, but the abil­i­ty to pro­duce and sup­ply prod­ucts has been lim­it­ed.

“It doesn’t af­fect the oc­cu­pan­cy as much as af­fect the abil­i­ty to trans­port pro­duce and prod­ucts. And this cur­rent time, none of the ho­tels are say­ing we have a sit­u­a­tion or we have a cri­sis. Ob­vi­ous­ly, our sup­pli­ers, what I be­lieve is in the food, bev­er­age or even hard­ware sup­pli­ers may have lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty on that.

“But we are not see­ing a cri­sis that af­fects us di­rect­ly at the mo­ment. With­out a doubt, it still is a mat­ter of con­cern for the wider To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion and I think if it goes on in­def­i­nite­ly, it is go­ing to be­come a cri­sis. But for now, it’s been man­aged to the com­men­da­tion of the Port Au­thor­i­ty and all the per­sons in­volved. The new ves­sel (tem­po­rary barge) op­er­a­tions—whilst it’s go­ing to re­place the car­go—I think it’s go­ing to help in this sit­u­a­tion.”

He said he hopes that the pro­mo­tion of To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val in Trinidad will in­crease con­fi­dence in the fes­ti­val and en­cour­age more peo­ple to at­tend.