Tourism groups form new coalition

Sev­er­al tourism in­dus­try or­gan­i­sa­tions have joined forces to form a new coali­tion aimed at strength­en­ing ad­vo­ca­cy and im­prov­ing stan­dards across the sec­tor.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Tourism As­so­ci­a­tions (TTC­TA) has been for­mal­ly es­tab­lished as a reg­is­tered pro­fes­sion­al body in­tend­ed to pro­vide a uni­fied voice for tourism stake­hold­ers and a plat­form for en­gage­ment with na­tion­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

The coali­tion is be­ing led by in­ter­im chair Lor­raine Pouchet.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease an­nounc­ing the launch, the or­gan­i­sa­tion aims to im­prove the tourism pro­file of Trinidad and To­ba­go through pol­i­cy ad­vo­ca­cy, pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and col­lab­o­ra­tion among in­dus­try groups.

The found­ing mem­bers of the coali­tion are the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tourist Trans­port Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, the Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the TRANS­MAX As­so­ci­a­tion.

The TTC­TA said its ob­jec­tives in­clude en­gag­ing in strate­gic pol­i­cy di­a­logue with Gov­ern­ment on tourism leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing re­view­ing the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act to en­sure com­pet­i­tive con­ces­sion frame­works.

It al­so plans to ad­vo­cate on na­tion­al tourism is­sues and pro­mote in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and train­ing to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal tourism pro­fes­sion­als.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it will op­er­ate on a phi­los­o­phy of col­lab­o­ra­tion among ex­ist­ing tourism bod­ies rather than du­pli­cat­ing their work.

“Our goal is to build a more re­silient and glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion. Through trans­par­ent gov­er­nance and strate­gic part­ner­ships, we are lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a tourism sec­tor that is not on­ly ro­bust but ac­count­able to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”