00:00President of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association, Reginald McLean, says he has no issue with Sandals Resort setting a business on the island.
00:10In fact, he tells The Morning Edition that the hotel chain recently went to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, noting that they are now experiencing a boom in tourism.
00:21He says that alone is encouraging.
00:24That, unfortunately, probably was our Sandals that should have been opening in Tobago.
00:30So, whilst there are a lot of naysayers here in Tobago and in Trinidad, they really don't understand the details of it and what it does for a country.
00:41He notes that because Tobago depends on tourism, it is left at a disadvantage due to the taxes on several items.
00:50I can go to Grenada tomorrow morning and buy a bottle of our rum for half the price that we pay for it here.
00:57Same thing with food items.
00:59So, the taxation on a lot of these items has created an issue where Tobago becomes more expensive.
01:06And you would see people complaining about that.
01:08But if our inputs into the tourism product are very expensive, our outputs will be.
01:14McLean further tells us the state of emergency put a significant damper on Tobago's tourism earnings.
01:21But if you kill 80% of your bookings coming in because of an SOE, which primarily was geared towards Trinidad, it hurts.
01:30And it hurts because it's coming in the middle of your peak season, which started in December.
01:35He says the association has come up with four key areas to boost tourism in Tobago, among them refinancing and restructuring of the Tobago Tourism Agency, as well as developing an airlift plan for Tobago.
01:51Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.
Comments