Sto­ry by LOYSE VIN­CENT

Tourism stake­hold­ers in To­ba­go say they have to go back to the draw­ing board as they are forced to watch their earn­ings dis­ap­pear as a re­sult of COV­OD -19.

On­ly yes­ter­day CEO of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency, Louis Lewis, an­nounced that the in­dus­try will suf­fer ap­prox­i­mate­ly 88 mil­lion dol­lars in loss­es due to the fall­out from the dis­ease. Those di­rect­ly in­volved say they are look­ing for a light at the end of the tun­nel.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to­day with a cou­ple of the en­tre­pre­neurs who op­er­ate at the Store Bay Beach fa­cil­i­ty. They told us that on a nor­mal day, the fa­cil­i­ty would be alive with vis­i­tors, ven­dors, and even those seek­ing es­cape, but there was no one to en­joy the beau­ti­ful wa­ters and tran­quil scene.

Shop own­er, Martha Archer has been in busi­ness for 25 years. When she spoke with Guardian Me­dia to­day, she was in the process of pack­ing away the goods at ther shop, De­light­ful Plea­sures, in­def­i­nite­ly. 

“I am just here to take down some goods and put them in a bag so that they won’t ab­sorb so much dust,” she ex­plained. “I an­tic­i­pate it is go­ing to be a long haul. As for what is go­ing to hap­pen for me from here I’m not sure, be­cause I don’t know what will hap­pen in terms of mov­ing for­ward.”

Artist An­tho­ny McKen­na has been sell­ing paint­ings in the Pi­geon Point area for over eight years. He said he would re­main op­ti­mistic.

“Well, as you can see, there is no one around and I de­pend on the tourist for my busi­ness,” he said. “Things have dwin­dled down to noth­ing, but I am here still do­ing my work.”

McKen­na said he lives with­in walk­ing dis­tance from the area and he plans to con­tin­ue paint­ing and ex­pand­ing his port­fo­lio un­til con­di­tions im­prove

Mean­while, the own­er of “Jim­my’s Guest House” at Crown Point, Ly­la Mustapha, was less hope-filled.

She re­vealed that all of the sin­gle, two- and three-bed­room self-con­tained units she has on of­fer are va­cant. Ly­la Mustapha de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as trag­ic and said she is still look­ing for a way to main­tain staff, while stay­ing in busi­ness un­til con­di­tions im­prove.