Car­la Cu­pid, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL) will be leav­ing the com­pa­ny.

She said she will be vol­un­tar­i­ly sep­a­rat­ing from TTL come June 15.  

She held the post for two years and will be the fourth head of the TTL to ex­it the post in the last five years.

Stake­hold­ers con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia are not hap­py with the lat­est de­par­ture.

There had been re­ports that Cu­pid re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect but she de­bunked this via a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia when asked about the is­sue. 

“This is in­ac­cu­rate. I re­ceived a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age that is com­men­su­rate with stan­dard in­dus­try prac­tice. I will be tak­ing some well-de­served time for my fam­i­ly and lat­er ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties that may present them­selves with­in my scope. I am proud of our achieve­ments and wish the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued suc­cess,” Cu­pid said.  

How­ev­er, no rea­son was giv­en for her de­ci­sion. 

Cu­pid has been act­ing in the po­si­tion since Ju­ly 2022 and was on­ly con­firmed on April 3, 2024. 

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that Cor­nell Buck­radee, man­ag­er of In­vest­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at TTL, will over­see op­er­a­tional mat­ters un­til an act­ing CEO is ap­point­ed. 

When con­tact­ed Bukradee said, “Sor­ry to be blunt but I have no com­ment. Have a great week­end.” 

In Ju­ly 2022, Kur­tis Rudd a for­mer vice pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing at Pres­tige Hold­ings was sacked from his act­ing CEO po­si­tion, which he on­ly held for 10 months. 

Rudd took over from Hei­di Alert in Sep­tem­ber 2021, who had been act­ing CEO from 2019 to 2021. 

She took up the po­si­tion fol­low­ing the dis­missal of Camille Camp­bell, a for­mer TSTT mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive, in Au­gust 2019. 

Nei­ther of the three had been con­firmed for the po­si­tion. 

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell on this lat­est de­vel­op­ment proved fu­tile up to late yes­ter­day evening.

‘The trend con­tin­ues’ 

Pres­i­dent of the Small Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Own­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (STAOTT) Denise Ale­ong said since the for­ma­tion of Tourism Trinidad Ltd af­ter the clo­sure of the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny in 2017, it has been the trend of CEOs not stay­ing long in the po­si­tion. 

Ale­ong said tourism has been un­sta­ble in Trinidad for some time now. 

“We do not have a brand, To­ba­go has a brand, they are try­ing, but Trinidad is not go­ing any­where. Here we are again look­ing for an­oth­er CEO. The rel­e­vant tourism per­son­nel are not talk­ing to stake­hold­ers as they should,” she stressed. 

Cruise Agent Charles Car­val­ho said he has worked with Cu­pid at many trade shows and has been im­pressed with her ca­pa­bil­i­ties to ex­e­cute. 

Car­val­ho not­ed that he is sad to see her leave TTL.