As vac­ci­na­tion num­bers and vac­cine op­tions in T&T con­tin­ue to rise, plans for the re­open­ing of shut­down in­dus­tries con­tin­ue to be de­vel­oped.

In the past few weeks, restau­rants have re­sumed ser­vice, and re­tail out­lets have re­opened their doors.

Per­son­al ser­vices are al­so gear­ing up to fol­low suit soon.

While the coun­try’s bor­ders have been re­opened in Ju­ly 17, the tourism in­dus­try has not.

But, at the start of Au­gust, there was some in­di­ca­tion that there might be move­ment to­wards that chang­ing as an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment from the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts en­ti­tled “Tourism sec­tor re­silience:COVID-19 Pro­to­cols for the T&T Tourism Sec­tor 2021.” was re­leased.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, “the over­ar­ch­ing goal of this doc­u­ment is to sup­port the re­cov­ery and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the tourism sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a health per­spec­tive in the face of the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

The doc­u­ment out­lines guide­lines for the tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor to im­ple­ment rec­om­mend­ed pub­lic health mea­sures, pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures that can mit­i­gate the risk of trans­mis­sion of COVID-19 in the con­duct of their op­er­a­tions as well as fa­cil­i­tate a sus­tain­able restart of the tourism econ­o­my in T&T.

The doc­u­ment, ac­cord­ing to its mis­sion is al­so to be used to en­sure that all en­ti­ties who fall un­der the um­brel­la of the sec­tor fall in line and con­form to the ‘new nor­mal’ through­out the tourism val­ue chain in or­der to pro­mote the health of vis­i­tors and the work­force.

The Min­istry shared the doc­u­ment on its so­cial me­dia page on Thurs­day.

Randall Mitchell

Among the en­ti­ties ad­vised to fol­low these guide­lines are ho­tels, guest­hous­es, bed & break­fasts, vil­las, restau­rants and bars, beach­es, life­guards, sites and at­trac­tions, tour op­er­a­tors and tour guid­ing ser­vices, tourism trans­porta­tion and wa­ter sports.

Apart from typ­i­cal so­cial dis­tanc­ing and sani­ti­sa­tion guide­lines, the doc­u­ment al­so strong­ly ad­vo­cates for dig­i­tal process­es for or­der­ing of food and book­ing or rooms and ser­vices.

In his mes­sage in the doc­u­ment to stake­hold­ers, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell not­ed the in­dus­try had suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic af­ter see­ing an up­ward trend pri­or.

“Be­fore our first case of COVID-19 in March 2020, the first three months of the year showed great promise with an im­proved per­for­mance for the first three months, and the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od led the way with a 6.5 per cent in­crease in vis­i­tor ar­rivals over Car­ni­val 2019. The pe­ri­od March 2020 and con­tin­u­ing in­to 2021 has pre­sent­ed the great­est chal­lenge to the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try by far,” said Mitchell, who added that this coun­try and by ex­ten­sion the Caribbean re­gion had seen “ its vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties ex­posed by the glob­al im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

Mitchell said, “ The de­vel­op­ment of these health and safe­ty pro­to­cols will en­sure that the warmth and hos­pi­tal­i­ty that our twin is­lands have be­come known for is still avail­able to our vis­i­tors, but with­in the con­text of a safe en­vi­ron­ment through a ro­bust con­tin­u­ing sys­tem of the mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment of risk.”

He ex­plained that the health and safe­ty pro­to­cols are in­tend­ed to give our stake­hold­ers the con­fi­dence that they can once again wel­come their guests safe­ly while al­so pro­vid­ing po­ten­tial vis­i­tors with the con­fi­dence “ that they are com­ing to a des­ti­na­tion that can give them a mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence, with­in an en­vi­ron­ment that cares for their safe­ty.”

CEO of Tourism Trinidad Hei­di Alert agreed that harp­ing on health and safe­ty was now key to the in­dus­try.

Heidi Alert

She said in the doc­u­ment, “In a world which has re­de­fined ‘nor­mal’, health, hy­giene, safe­ty, and se­cu­ri­ty are now our tourism wealth. Trust and con­fi­dence are the crit­i­cal com­po­nents for the build­ing of a suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able tourism sec­tor. In this great re­set­ting of the in­dus­try at a glob­al lev­el, there is a shin­ing light of hope as the tourism in­dus­try can now re­build even stronger than be­fore.”

She con­tin­ued, “our guests must feel safe and se­cure when vis­it­ing Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad and our cit­i­zens must be con­fi­dent that vis­i­tors are virus-free and, there­fore, it is safe to wel­come them. From the time tourists en­ter our shores to when they de­part ‘Sweet Sweet Trinidad’, our guests must have con­fi­dence in the qual­i­ty sys­tems be­ing pro­vid­ed in mit­i­gat­ing against the risks of COVID-19 in­fec­tion.”

She stressed that the pre­req­ui­site in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic health stan­dards should be in place for the safe­ty of cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors alike.

Alert’s coun­ter­part, CEO of Tourism To­ba­go Louis Lewis sim­i­lar­ly im­plored that the mea­sures be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly giv­en the im­mense im­pact the shut-down has had on To­ba­go.

“In the con­text of To­ba­go, tourism has been, and for the medi­um term, will re­main the dom­i­nant sec­tor for the gen­er­a­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. As we pre­pare for the re­open­ing of our bor­ders, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd has part­nered with the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment and Tourism Trinidad Ltd in de­vel­op­ing a num­ber of pro­to­cols for the safe­ty of staff and the man­age­ment of vis­i­tors at the var­i­ous es­tab­lish­ments and places of in­ter­est in To­ba­go. These pro­to­cols have amal­ga­mat­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha), the T&T Health Stan­dards, as well as the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC),” said Lewis, “It is im­por­tant for us to work in col­lab­o­ra­tion in pre­sent­ing our des­ti­na­tion as a safe op­tion for po­ten­tial trav­ellers. The pro­to­cols de­vel­oped, once ad­hered to will con­vey that as­sur­ance we pro­vide to vis­i­tors through our mar­ket­ing chan­nels with con­fi­dence and there­fore en­hance our com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

Louis Lewis

Lewis stressed that the is­land must live up to its Be­yond Or­di­nary brand­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors.

“In our re­cov­ery process the safe­ty of our vis­i­tors and our abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate the same is of ut­most im­por­tance. We can on­ly de­liv­er on our beck­on­ing if we op­er­ate with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the Health and Safe­ty pro­to­cols which we have de­vel­oped,” Lewis said.

But while these words of en­cour­age­ment came from Lewis, there is a lev­el of con­cern from some hote­liers con­cern­ing the rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of vac­ci­na­tions on the is­land. Jacque­line Yorke-West­cott, di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion raised the con­cern in a me­dia in­ter­view this week be­fore post­ing com­par­a­tive sta­tis­tics for the vac­ci­na­tion ef­fort on her so­cial me­dia.

She not­ed as of Mon­day Au­gust 16, 11,280 To­bag­o­ni­ans had been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, which equates to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of the is­land’s over­all pop­u­la­tion.

Yorke-West­cott had pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors had warned that they would not list ac­com­mo­da­tions or tours op­er­a­tors if staff were not vac­ci­nat­ed.

Jacqueline Yorke-Westcott

Photographer: Charles Parris