Tobago to get direct flights from Toronto, Miami, Guyana

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is ex­pect­ed to get some ad­di­tion­al traf­fic from next month with di­rect flights from new source mar­kets.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine an­nounced the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a post-Bud­get me­dia con­fer­ence at the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture, Scar­bor­ough.

Dur­ing the $4.12 bil­lion bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Robert is iden­ti­fied tourism as a cru­cial cog in To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic thrust.

With the im­pend­ing open­ing of the new air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing, stake­hold­ers had been clam­our­ing for au­thor­i­ties to at­tract more vis­i­tors to the is­land.

Au­gus­tine said the THA is fi­nal­ly get­ting move­ment af­ter ex­ten­sive con­ver­sa­tions with Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) and oth­er car­ri­ers.

“We are push­ing for those di­rect flights to be­gin from as ear­ly as to­wards the end of next month,” Au­gus­tine said, adding that Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion and Trans­porta­tion Eli Za­k­our will an­nounce the ex­act flight day af­ter arrange­ments are fi­nalised.

He added, “Where we are at is di­rect flights are com­ing from Toron­to to To­ba­go, so that should be on­board­ed soon. We are al­so look­ing at Ogle in Guyana to To­ba­go. We are al­so look­ing at Mi­a­mi di­rect to To­ba­go.”

Au­gus­tine said these di­rect flights will all be aboard CAL flights, while the THA is in ad­vanced ne­go­ti­a­tions with oth­er air­lines per­tain­ing to di­rect flights from oth­er North Amer­i­can des­ti­na­tions.

“We are open­ing To­ba­go to the North Amer­i­can mar­ket and one new des­ti­na­tion in the Caribbean. Those con­ver­sa­tions are ad­vanced, the fund­ing for the mar­ket­ing of those flights have al­ready been re­leased to To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed since the month of May,” he said.

While ex­cit­ed about the de­vel­op­ment, Au­gus­tine lament­ed that To­ba­go’s ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor re­mains un­pre­pared.

“The qual­i­ty of the ac­com­mo­da­tion has been a long­stand­ing is­sue, and if we are to be com­pet­i­tive, then we must be hon­est that To­ba­go does not pos­sess any four- or five-star re­sort.”

He said cus­tomer ser­vice must not be found lack­ing as well, say­ing a train­ing pro­gramme is on­go­ing for those in the tourism sec­tor.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, head of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cur­tis Williams said he was ex­cit­ed about the di­rect flights.

How­ev­er, he too ex­pressed con­cern about the qual­i­ty of rooms avail­able, urg­ing im­me­di­ate up­grades in the in­ter­im.

“There is no room to put these peo­ple when they do come,” he said.