Augustine: New airport could open in time for Tobago Carnival

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has hint­ed at a grand open­ing of the spank­ing new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in time for To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last Thurs­day, Au­gus­tine said the build­out of the $1.2 bil­lion air­port con­tin­ues but would not be com­plet­ed by the first quar­ter of this year.

He be­lieves Ju­ly/Au­gust is a more re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tion, but said a spec­tac­u­lar open­ing to co­in­cide with the fifth an­nu­al fes­ti­val, sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 30 to No­vem­ber 1, is strong­ly be­ing con­sid­ered. The an­nu­al event has been grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 37,500 peo­ple, most­ly Trinida­di­ans, vis­it­ing the is­land for the 2025 cel­e­bra­tions.

Au­gus­tine said it would be a mis­take to open the new ter­mi­nal and have pas­sen­gers tra­vers­ing an emp­ty shell.

He said the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence must in­clude restau­rants and oth­er con­ces­sion­aires to add to the mod­ern am­bi­ence.

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty leader said he has vis­it­ed the new ter­mi­nal no less than four times in the last two weeks and is work­ing close­ly with the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and oth­er of­fi­cials toured the fa­cil­i­ty on March 20 to en­sure that se­cu­ri­ty as­sets are in place for op­er­a­tion.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John is ex­pect­ed to in­spect the new run­way soon for an of­fi­cial han­dover.

Au­gus­tine said, “Es­sen­tial­ly what we have now is a shell — a beau­ti­ful shell nonethe­less.

“All we have there is a ter­mi­nal, we have seat­ing, we have coun­ters, but it re­quires some build­out. It re­quires con­ces­sion­aires to go in­to the space and build­out their as­sets and pro­vide their ser­vice.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in March 2025, dur­ing a prac­ti­cal open­ing of the new ter­mi­nal, said the air­port has a ca­pac­i­ty for three mil­lion pas­sen­gers an­nu­al­ly. Ex-fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had pre­dict­ed the new ter­mi­nal would be op­er­a­tional by Ju­ly 2025.

Dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo ad­just­ed the time­line to March 2026.

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said the biggest hin­drance to To­ba­go cap­i­tal­is­ing on the new ter­mi­nal and a pos­si­ble boost in ar­rivals on the is­land is its lack of qual­i­ty rooms.

The Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) has es­ti­mat­ed that To­ba­go has around 3,000 reg­is­tered rooms, while the un­reg­is­tered ac­counts for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000.

Au­gus­tine said, “Our biggest chal­lenge right now is the qual­i­ty of rooms that would at­tract the front of the plane and that would at­tract larg­er car­ri­ers and oth­er car­ri­ers to To­ba­go.”

He said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is ne­go­ti­at­ing with var­i­ous air­lines to bump up the num­ber of di­rect flights while al­so work­ing with the TH­TA on a pro­gramme to im­prove the qual­i­ty of rooms and their pack­ages.

In the past six years, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the THA and the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment of­fered grants and oth­er stim­u­lus for ho­tel ren­o­va­tions.

In 2020, the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a $50 mil­lion Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Re­lief Grant, ac­cessed by over 60 prop­er­ties for up­grades.

In No­vem­ber 2025, four ho­tels — Crown Point Beach Ho­tel, Shep­herd’s Inn, Tropik­ist Beach Ho­tel and Re­sort, and Sparkle’s B Love­ly Events and Ac­com­mo­da­tion — re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.7 mil­lion through the Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Project and phase two of the Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Re­lief Grant pro­gramme.

Last month, Au­gus­tine urged lo­cal busi­ness­es to get their fi­nan­cial records in or­der to ac­cess the loan-guar­an­tee pro­gramme. Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts said sub­scrip­tion to the pro­gramme was much low­er than an­tic­i­pat­ed as she amend­ed the min­i­mum loan from $750,000 to $375,000.

Au­gus­tine said the THA is look­ing to re­vise its pol­i­cy on grant dis­tri­b­u­tion and is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL) to be more proac­tive.

“Whether we should go in our­selves, iden­ti­fy at least 100 rooms in this fis­cal year and get them fixed in the qual­i­ty that is re­quired, in­stead of giv­ing them a grant and hop­ing for the best.”

TH­TA pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean agreed there aren’t suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty rooms on the is­land.

How­ev­er, he blamed fru­gal ho­tel own­ers for al­low­ing their as­sets to de­pre­ci­ate and al­so point­ed to a lack of sup­port from the State.

“We have ho­tels that the own­ers of the ho­tels need to sell them so To­ba­go can get back a prop­er room stock. Peo­ple prob­a­bly not gonna like me for say­ing that, but that is the re­al­i­ty. If we can’t get peo­ple to fix their ho­tels, we not gonna move for­ward,” MacLean said.

He felt the grants and low-cost loans of­fered by the THA and cen­tral Gov­ern­ment were woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient.

“A bank is not lend­ing tourism in To­ba­go mon­ey. They are not in­ter­est­ed in fund­ing tourism, so how is tourism gonna grow un­less the gov­ern­ment puts funds in­to low-cost loans to the pri­vate sec­tor?”

He be­lieves $1 bil­lion is re­quired to reignite the tourism in­dus­try, in­clud­ing a re­vamped mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

“To­ba­go needs a bil­lion dol­lars to get the ex­ist­ing plant on the is­land back in or­der. And when I say plant, it’s not just rooms. You have a lot of restau­rants that have closed and all of that needs to come back to the fold.”

He said the air­port is not the panacea that many are mak­ing it out to be.

MacLean said in­vest­ment in tourism would on­ly make sense if peo­ple could see a vi­able route to re­turns.

He said the air­port may strug­gle to fill out the con­ces­sion­aire booths be­cause of the low num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals.

In 2024, the is­land at­tract­ed 24,500 vis­i­tors, a sig­nif­i­cant drop from its peak in the 1980s and 1990s when it was at­tract­ing close to 90,000 peo­ple.

He said chang­ing the To­ba­go Land Act is piv­otal to shift­ing the mo­men­tum.

“That is what they are avoid­ing. To fix it, you have to make some hard choic­es.”

MacLean said the as­so­ci­a­tion is do­ing its best and ex­pand­ing its hori­zon be­yond the tra­di­tion­al US and Eu­ro­pean mar­kets.

He con­firmed ef­forts are be­ing made to tap in­to South Amer­i­ca, par­tic­u­lar­ly Colom­bia, Brazil, Pana­ma, Suri­name, Guyana and Venezuela.

“We are chang­ing cer­tain mar­ket­ing strate­gies with the hope we can get some in­creased peo­ple in To­ba­go based on what is hap­pen­ing in the rest of the world.

“That is where we are mak­ing a very big push at the mo­ment, but re­mem­ber every time you go in­to a mar­ket it takes a while to build that mar­ket... You will see some im­prove­ment in trav­el from there in Oc­to­ber.”

MacLean de­clined to say which air­lines the as­so­ci­a­tion have been en­gag­ing, say­ing it would be pre­ma­ture to re­veal de­tails.

There have been calls in the past for T&T, as the most south­ern Caribbean is­land, to tap in­to South Amer­i­ca’s po­ten­tial, con­sid­er­ing the large mi­grant pop­u­la­tion al­ready here.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go would not be able to move three mil­lion pas­sen­gers when the new ter­mi­nal is open, but the in­ten­tion is to get there.

“Even the oth­er is­lands that are cur­rent­ly do­ing bet­ter than we are, they are not hit­ting the two mil­lion mark, maybe one mil­lion, most are un­der a mil­lion. It is about the abil­i­ty to car­ry that load, but we don’t re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ex­pect to car­ry that load im­me­di­ate­ly. To­ba­go at its peak was hit­ting 87,000 an­nu­al­ly and then it fell off sharply.”

He said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is work­ing on its own as well as with Civ­il Avi­a­tion to get more air­lines to the is­land.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett was in Ger­many from March 3 to 5 for ITB Berlin, the world’s largest trade show.

The Sun­day Guardian sent ques­tions to her about the suc­cess of the trip and To­ba­go’s readi­ness for the ter­mi­nal open­ing, but she did not re­spond up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

The Di­vi­sion of Tourism post­ed a Dai­ly Mail ar­ti­cle on its Face­book page last week show­ing UK search­es for To­ba­go have in­creased by 79 per cent.

British Air­ways has been heav­i­ly pro­mot­ing Caribbean des­ti­na­tions as tur­moil in the Mid­dle East has made oth­er routes un­prof­itable due to the hike in jet fu­el costs and closed air­space.

MacLean is hop­ing To­ba­go can cap­i­talise in the short term on this in­creased de­mand, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the win­ter sea­son.