00:00We have just invested just over $1 billion in a brand spanking new airport.
00:06We need to operationalize that airport.
00:09Whether or not we agree on whether or not the investment was needed at the time
00:14or whether we had other things to spend that money on, it is here.
00:19And we need to take advantage of the opportunities that it presents.
00:22The tourism forum was held at the Magdalena Grand under the theme,
00:27Tourism, the Fuel of the Future.
00:30Chief Secretary Fahli Augustin, in delivering the feature address, said
00:33the air bridge situation between Trinidad and Tobago must be addressed.
00:38Mr. Augustin called for the Airlift Committee to be re-engaged.
00:43How are we running a tourism sector where 14% of our GDP comes from tourism?
00:50Where our second largest employer is the tourism sector?
00:56And it is so difficult to get here.
01:01We can't run a tourism sector and we just can't get to the island.
01:05We can't run a tourism sector on standby with everybody waiting at Piako for 24 hours, 48 hours to get a flight.
01:15Nobody is leaving their bed and their country to come to another island.
01:21We have to sit in an airport for 24 hours just to get to another destination.
01:27And luck and chance?
01:30It's better we let NLC be run the airport.
01:32Mr. Augustin said Caribbean Airlines must do right by Tobago and called out the airline for its failure to follow through on its plan for direct flights between Toronto and Tobago.
01:46We offer to pay as we pay with BA and Condor to get them to come here.
01:53We have agreement.
01:55We go through the contract.
01:58We have our lawyers go through the contract.
02:01And after we have signed, nobody from Caribbean Airlines side signed.
02:05But then I look around and Caribbean Airlines every Monday morning is hopping to a new destination.
02:11That makes me feel like a bastard child.
02:14That makes me feel like the outside picnic, like the one that the family never really wanted, like the horned child.
02:21Mr. Augustin said Tobago is ready to lead where tourism is concerned.
02:26But the allocation for marketing the island needs to be met by the central government,
02:32especially when faced with competition from others in the region.
02:36In total, our allocation for this fiscal was 42 million TT dollars.
02:44If I am to check what that is in terms of U.S. dollar at today's rate, that's just a little over 6.1 million U.S. dollars.
02:56If we go to Barbados neighboring us, they are spending closer to 40 million U.S. dollars to just market their destination.
03:09They are who we are competing with.
03:13We are telling the world, come to Tobago instead of going there.
03:17Look at what they are investing in their product versus the peanuts we are given to drive our industry.
03:27Elizabeth Williams, TV6 News.
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