‘Govt not treating tourism as a pillar of diversification’

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

Tourism in­dus­try stake­hold­er Lor­raine Pouchet says the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to tourism falls far short of what is need­ed if Trinidad and To­ba­go is se­ri­ous about us­ing the sec­tor to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my away from its de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

Speak­ing in re­sponse to con­cerns that tourism re­ceived on­ly a brief men­tion dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Pouchet said she was not sur­prised by what she de­scribed as a fa­mil­iar pat­tern of gov­ern­ments talk­ing about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through tourism with­out back­ing those promis­es with mean­ing­ful ac­tion.

“It was de­ja vu. Over the many years, most gov­ern­ments, if not all, have spo­ken about di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my through tourism, and no­body has done it,” said Pouchet, pres­i­dent of The Trinidad & To­ba­go In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion.

Pouchet said a clos­er look at the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for Trinidad Tourism Ltd re­in­forced her con­cerns. Ac­cord­ing to her as­sess­ment, the agency has been al­lo­cat­ed $19 mil­lion, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15 mil­lion ear­marked for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

That, she ar­gued, leaves on­ly about $4 mil­lion avail­able for crit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties such as mar­ket­ing, des­ti­na­tion pro­mo­tion, train­ing and in­dus­try pro­grammes.

“To me, that is not suf­fi­cient, and that will not touch the tip of the ice­berg,” she said not­ing, “I do not see that the al­lo­ca­tion and the bud­get speak to them re­al­ly con­sid­er­ing se­ri­ous­ly that tourism can be a pil­lar of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

While Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al de­tails dur­ing the bud­get de­bate, Pouchet ques­tioned how much could re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be achieved with­out stronger fi­nan­cial sup­port for the sec­tor.

She al­so ex­pressed con­cern that tourism may not be re­ceiv­ing the lev­el of strate­gic at­ten­tion re­quired with­in the new­ly con­fig­ured Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and Tourism.

Ac­cord­ing to Pouchet, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion is need­ed be­tween min­istry of­fi­cials and in­dus­try prac­ti­tion­ers who work dai­ly to at­tract vis­i­tors and mar­ket the des­ti­na­tion.

“My con­cern is that there prob­a­bly needs to be a lot more col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the prac­ti­tion­ers of the tourism sec­tor and the min­istry staff so that we can come up with a prop­er pro­gramme and a prop­er plan for how to di­ver­si­fy in a mean­ing­ful way,” she said.

Pouchet stressed that the ben­e­fits of tourism ex­tend well be­yond ho­tels and vis­i­tor at­trac­tions. Us­ing cruise tourism as an ex­am­ple, she not­ed that eco­nom­ic gains can flow to sup­pli­ers and ser­vice providers through the pro­vi­sion of food, bev­er­ages and oth­er goods re­quired by vis­it­ing ves­sels.

She ar­gued that tourism should be viewed as a broad­er for­eign ex­change earn­er ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing mul­ti­ple sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Pouchet said any se­ri­ous ef­fort to de­vel­op tourism must be dri­ven from the high­est lev­el of gov­ern­ment.

“If we are to se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er di­ver­si­fy­ing through tourism, the Prime Min­is­ter has to be the one to make that state­ment, be­cause on­ly when she makes that state­ment is any­body go­ing to take it se­ri­ous­ly,” she added.