The pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) says the re­cent Unit­ed States trav­el ad­vi­so­ry against this coun­try is dam­ag­ing to To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor and ‘to­tal­ly un­fair’.

Regi­nald McLean says the lev­el 3 ad­vi­so­ry pub­lished on May 7, 2025—which warns against trav­el to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause of crime, ter­ror­ism, and kid­nap­ping—is based on is­sues main­ly hap­pen­ing in Trinidad, but To­ba­go is pay­ing the price.

He says To­ba­go is safe, but be­ing tied to Trinidad makes the is­land look dan­ger­ous.

“To­ba­go, be­ing tied to Trinidad, has some un­for­tu­nate things, and that is one of the things,” McLean told Guardian Me­dia. “The crime in Trinidad is a lot worse than we would all like it to be, and that re­flects di­rect­ly on the is­land of To­ba­go. So you know, it’s a mat­ter of us try­ing to get tourism back to where it needs to be. We’re not go­ing to ex­pect mir­a­cles.”

McLean says crime in Trinidad is a prob­lem, but To­ba­go’s po­lice force has done well to keep crime low on the is­land this year.

He says the ad­vi­so­ry comes af­ter the State of Emer­gency was lift­ed and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies still have not been told it is over.

He said that’s now af­fect­ing talks with air­lines and tour op­er­a­tors.

And he re­vealed that can­cel­la­tions start­ed with­in hours of the ad­vi­so­ry up­date.

“That came out that morn­ing, and I got a phone call from a mem­ber of the As­so­ci­a­tion. They got their first can­cel­la­tion. So the fall­out is go­ing to be peo­ple,” he said, “be­cause it's al­most a ‘do not trav­el’ [warn­ing]. So, when you have a ‘do not trav­el’ to a des­ti­na­tion, it puts you in a very bad spot­light.”

“To­ba­go is very safe,” McLean as­serts. “I know that our po­lice and all of that are deal­ing with it and mak­ing sure that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is kept out of To­ba­go, and they've done a very good job for the year so far."

The TH­TA pres­i­dent says he has writ­ten to the new Min­is­ter of Tourism, in the hopes of set­ting up an ur­gent meet­ing this week.

He says To­ba­go needs to be mar­ket­ed as a safe and sep­a­rate des­ti­na­tion—or the is­land could lose even more vis­i­tors.