Tourism consultant: TDC has been dysfunctional

Lisa Shandilya, consultant at Revolution Destination, which consults in tourism and hospitality, said an act and policy for the TDC to operate effectively had not been established, so the TDC became dysfunctional, a runaway horse with a lot of money being spent unnecessarily because people in the organisation did not understand the tourism industry.

“The hiring practices were all skewed based on political affiliations,” Shandilya said. She believes the move towards splitting the organisation into two is a good idea but is dependent on the marketing of the tourism product.

“Basically, there is a difference between marketing tourism products for the island versus the brand destination of Trinidad and Tobago. So one has to be clear in terms of the act and the policy and the direction for both authorities before they go diving into another situation where the government agencies will be dysfunctional once more. So they have to be clear on their plans.” “You cannot say you are going to be using the Bahamian model, because in The Bahamas you have Nassau in terms of how they market their islands, but you also have the monopolies of where the Government funding comes from.” She said the Government had to be very careful in terms of how it dissolved the TDC and created the different authorities. Noting Tourism Minister Shamfa Cudjoe’s statement on the need for a regulatory authority to set basic standards for all tourism operators, she said that authority already existed within the TDC, but did not function for Tobago.

She said such a regulatory authority for standards and quality of the tourism products would have to be established in any organisation, because basically, “You are selling your tourism product.” Shandilya said both islands have fantastic tourism products compared to many of the islands in the Caribbean but there had been too many people in management positions both in Trinidad and in Tobago who held their positions as a result of nepotism and were only there based on whoever was in government.

“So you have a strong alliance to whatever the political will is, and if the political will is just to not do anything, the management will have to follow suit.” Lorraine Pouchet, president of the Incoming Tour Operators Association, also said she was not surprised at the decision to close down the TDC, because she suspected that decision had been in the making for some time.

However, she said several organisations including hers, the Hotel Restaurants and Tourism Association, the Hotel Association in Tobago and the Tour Operators Association in Tobago, had been meeting and had been corresponding with the TDC about the direction of its marketing strategy. She said the organisations were not happy with it and felt it was important that Trinidad and Tobago have their own marketing representatives and their own marketing strategies, because the products were essentially different, and the target market that might be attracted to Tobago might not be attracted to Trinidad.

She said the organisations felt the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) was “double dipping” in the marketing by getting funding from Central Government through the THA to do its marketing and also getting funding from the TDC, “Which meant that we had less funding available to us in Trinidad to market.” She said Trinidad has a “tremendous amount of potential” in the tourism sector, so the association has no problem with the dividing of the marketing strategy, although Trinidad and Tobago was still a brand and its concern would be how to tie in the three. This had to be a very scientific approach, she said, because the Trinidad brand included a wide variety of tourism activity and sights and attractions that would not be found in Tobago.