TOURISM IN TOBAGO BOOMING

Despite the buoyancy in Tobago’s tourism industry, hoteliers and other businessmen are forced to grapple with a shortage of labour as workers flee the industry for easier and comparatively higher-paying jobs in the social sector employment programmes. “There are people — and it is a mentality, a culture of too many people in Trinidad and Tobago — who prefer to work two weeks and stay home for two weeks doing nothing, than going to do what is considered hard work. And you can’t just simply raise a salary to attract someone,” said Rene Seepersadsingh, president of the Tobago hotels  body and manager at Grafton Beach Resort.

“People would tell you they could make that (money) in two weeks, so why would they want to come and work for you to do hard work.” This, according to Seepersadsingh, is the reality of the situation even as the island’s hoteliers enjoy what is known in the business as the “sweet spot” for the first time in years. Sumant Singh, Director of Tourism at the Tobago House of Assembly’s (THA) Tourism Division, in an interview with Newsday, explained: “In an environment of excess demand for rooms, hoteliers, for the first time in a long time, have the opportunity to raise their room rates, and we’ll see this for a long time continuing; that’s the ‘sweet spot!’”

At the same time, however, Singh, as well as other major players in the industry, acknowledge the very real fear that, at the rate of growth in terms of visitor arrivals within the sector, there would soon be a situation where demand would outstrip availability of rooms. “That’s quite true. Sooner or later we will need a lot of rooms, but at the same time we do have a lot of middle and small hotels and guest houses which can be brought into the mix,” Singh asserted. “So, once these can be upgraded, I am sure they can fill the void for some time to come. “Eventually, if there is no new room stock in the island and demand continues to grow, there is going to come a situation when (tourists will be unable to visit the island simply because there is no accommodation),” he noted.

But there is also the equally important factor of the island being “overcrowded” with tourists, and the question of a cut-off point at the desired level. How many tourists are enough? “No one knows what the critical mass is, but we’ll be able to work that out over time with our planners, with our research team, and of course in consultation with the industry partners and the Tobago public,” Singh told Newsday. “We don’t know what that mass is; if it’s 200,000, it could be 100,000, or whatever.” But Singh assured that Tobago would “definitely not” go the way of other Caribbean destinations where tourists far outnumber the citizens.”

Seepersadsingh concurred with Singh, and THA Chief Secretary Orville London, that there must be some sort of calculation of Tobago’s real carrying capacity of tourists. Seepersadsingh said this was typically worked out on several factors, including, most significantly, an assessment of the island’s infrastructure — roads, utilities etc — and its ability to actually meet the needs of both the resident and visitor population. “We, at this point, to be quite honest, it’s quite stretched as it is,” the Tobago hotel body president told Newsday. “It’s very, very stretched right now!”