KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions sim­mer be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, most of the T&T busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to op­er­ate undis­turbed. But one cor­ner of the tourism sec­tor is al­ready feel­ing the chill this Christ­mas.

In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTI­TOA) pres­i­dent Lor­raine Pouchet said sev­er­al mem­bers re­port­ed can­cel­la­tions for De­cem­ber, with at least 14 book­ings al­ready with­drawn. She said po­ten­tial vis­i­tors ex­pressed dis­com­fort over the height­ened US-Venezuela stand-off and its per­ceived spillover ef­fects on T&T. The af­fect­ed book­ings in­volve small and mid-sized trav­el groups, rang­ing from six to eight peo­ple and some­times up to 20.

“Like a fam­i­ly would come down, and some peo­ple, some­times two to ten. Clients from the US and UK are de­fer­ring their trips to Trinidad, wait­ing to see what hap­pens in the area,” Pouchet said.

One op­er­a­tor re­port­ed, “I have had four can­cel­la­tions for the month of De­cem­ber,” while an­oth­er said, “Yes, I have had many.”

“We have had two groups of 20-plus and ap­prox­i­mate­ly five in­ter­na­tion­al book­ings so far for De­cem­ber. Dozens of emails had to be sent re­gard­ing safe­ty and mil­i­tary pres­ence, re­as­sur­ing every­one that every­thing re­mains nor­mal at this time,” a third op­er­a­tor said.

Free in­de­pen­dent trav­ellers on cruise ships are al­so can­celling. Pouchet not­ed that the fig­ure re­flects on­ly the op­er­a­tors who had re­spond­ed to her in­quiry so far.

While tour op­er­a­tors brace for a sub­dued sea­son, man­u­fac­tur­ers re­main un­fazed. Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Dale Par­son said ten­sions have not touched the sec­tor, and op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue nor­mal­ly, de­scrib­ing it as “busi­ness as usu­al”.

“No, we are not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any is­sues at all. We’re just deal­ing with the nor­mal port con­ges­tion due to the Christ­mas rush. The pres­ence of US war­ships is not af­fect­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers at all,” Par­son said.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran said he has al­so seen no di­rect fall­out for re­tail or gen­er­al com­merce. Af­ter vis­it­ing malls and su­per­mar­kets over the week­end, he said eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty still ap­pears strong.

“That is an in­di­ca­tion that there is com­mer­cial traf­fic,” Char­ran said.

Char­ran said he is not aware of any sup­ply prob­lems af­fect­ing ship­ments from over­seas and be­lieves mis­in­for­ma­tion has con­tributed to un­nec­es­sary pan­ic. He said po­lit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship of­ten fu­els spec­u­la­tion, fear, and anx­i­ety, which can dam­age con­sumer con­fi­dence and the broad­er busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

“As far as be­ing in the busi­ness cham­ber, I have not heard any­body say­ing that they have not re­ceived their goods be­cause the ship on which their con­tain­ers were com­ing could not pass through the seas be­cause of the thing be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad.”

Char­ran con­trast­ed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the Houthi rebel at­tacks on com­mer­cial ship­ping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in 2023, where more than 190 in­ci­dents had been record­ed by Oc­to­ber 2024. Those at­tacks se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed glob­al trade and prompt­ed naval in­ter­ven­tion by Eu­rope, the Unit­ed King­dom, and the Unit­ed States.

He said that, un­like the Red Sea cri­sis, the Caribbean has not seen any phys­i­cal hos­til­i­ties or in­ter­fer­ence with ship­ping lanes.

He added that the pres­ence of US war­ships in T&T’s wa­ters is not a block­ade. Apart from tense diplo­mat­ic ex­changes be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Cara­cas, there have been no warn­ings to ves­sels or any signs of re­strict­ed move­ment through the re­gion.

“As far as we know, oth­er than the diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, or the com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, which have a cer­tain amount of ten­sions, that have not evolved in­to any­thing more than that, where ships are be­ing warned out of the re­gion or any­thing. I can­not see di­rect­ly how the sit­u­a­tion with the mil­i­tary ships there in Venezuela is af­fect­ing ship­ments at the ports.”

He said the ma­jor strain on re­tail­ers re­mains ac­cess to for­eign ex­change through com­mer­cial banks. The Cen­tral Bank, he added, has said it is work­ing on the is­sue and de­vel­op­ing a pol­i­cy frame­work, so the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is await­ing fur­ther ac­tion.

“I do know for a fact many re­tail­ers have not been able to bring in con­tain­ers of their Christ­mas items or toys and many oth­er types of goods that may nor­mal­ly come in for the Christ­mas sea­son, if on­ly be­cause they were un­able to source the Forex from the com­mer­cial banks.”