Bursting the tourism bubble

High-profile plans to combat crime do not enjoy a high success rate in Trinidad. However, they cannot be labelled as downright or abject failures. Just look at the pile up at the prisons — though it is bothersome by the number of murder accused set free due to legal blunders and change-of-heart witnesses. Increase in crime always puts a damper or dent on tourism schemes and programmes to woo visitors to the land of steelband and edible doubles. Tourism needs all the assistance it can muster to prop up the industry. I have come up with the Bubble Tourism Project which is not a plan. A plan is a plot with or without sinister intent. Bubble will deal with the prospects and fragility of the forever expanding or contracting hospitality or pleasure industry. I will introduce without fanfare the bubble syndrome and its potential and futuristic implications in the never-sleeping arena under the sobriquet of tourism. Despite my accent and play with words Bubble must not be mixed up or confused with Bauble or biblical historic Babel. It is very easy to trip up in the journey to master the correct use of the three unrelated words though linked or interwoven into a common pattern. Yuh understand? No really! Okay — I will endeavour to unravel the confusion. Yes confusion is the operative word that binds the grammatical triumvirate into a cohesive malady.

Bauble is a cheap toy or showy trinket ofttimes given as a gift to bamboozle (confuse) the recipient into thinking it is gold, silver or diamond or other sparkling emeralds. Babel connotes a scene of confusion; noisy assembly or mixture of tongues. A babbler is a chatterbox or a person with a penchant for disclosing secrets and mouthing confusion. Throw the spinoff of sexual tourism into the mix and you have to contend with an upsurge of HIV/AIDS aimed at decimating the exposed population. Sex and the Single Tourist as an educational film can play a vital role in highlighting the medical risk for the adventurous. The Bubble concept is just a microcosm of the ills bugging the industry in its bid to fill hotel rooms and the coffers of the national treasury on a regular basis. Confusion bedevils the local tourism energy. Aircraft not flying, airlines criss-crossing and double crossing each other regionally. Internal airfare to Tobago cut back. Bwee cut down on cut-up staff and services. Ships chancing arrival or by-passing and curio vendors spurned by cash-strapped tourists with back packs. Back squeezing of dollars to fund advertising and selling strangers to peep into your paradise on earth including sand, sea, steelband and soca. Initial counter measures to fight the fallout will press for the establishment of a high-powered (not low voltage) task force. It will most likely open the door for an army of high-priced tourism advisors from the UK (despite anti-tourism) and other experts even from Mars with commercial space-age travel on the horizon. But it will also spawn an avalanche of fast-talking conmen pitching to cash in on the money trade including free bed and breakfast. Boost to tourism sits on a goldmine of opportunistic projects waiting to be energetically implemented. Projections abound taking into account local or home-induced inputs.

Organise Carnival on a year round basis to match or catch up with non-stop electioneering by politicians along with trade unions forever playing mas. We can also invent another Carnival Messiah and throw in a film feature of our girls “Girls gone wild” while the saviour and the Gods fall asleep. Another thing I’ve discovered or still to unravel. Are natives of Triniland a special breed? Well, we must be unique. Every man, woman and child is engulfed with a phobia of exaggerated self importance. We generally believe that we are under an international microscope with everybody looking at us and bad talking us. We delude ourselves as being the most cosmopolitan country (not nation) in the world while one visit north to the US will present a virtual human and colour scheme representation and of the wide and wicked world. We created in our fantasy that late Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams was the third brightest or intelligent man in the world. We never determined or picked the top most duo. That isn’t important. Third or a bronze medal is okay for island people on a politically contrived mission for developed world status by 2020 or never... What I like most of all is the consummate ease with which our professors, columnists and part-time thinkers deal with and dismiss international issues. Wondrous strategies and insights are trotted out with a precision and confidence that United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan would wish life was so easy. He should be encouraged to move the UN headquarters from New York to calypso-limbo land and draw on the intellectualism and wisdom of our homespun geopolitical experts. A real net to catch or usher in diplomatic tourism. Funny though our diplomats are just a whimper in important UN sessions. Still tinkering with ideas on the home front whether or not to retake Marli Street from the United  States Embassy in Port-of-Spain. Battle plans put on hold as the US has withdrawn military aid from TT for not supporting its move for a waiver against subjecting their nationals for trial in the International Criminal Court.

CRIME FIGHTING
Trinidad and Tobago is a land of humour, picong, grand-charge and calypso.
Words...words...words before action. Fancy talk galore: “We are coming to get you.” It is good news that the anti-crime code-names have been dropped from the operations. Forget the tough talk- just do it. Old talk does not win the crime war.
Big boast that our carnival is greatest show on earth yet bands struggle to find their way to competition centres including the Queen’s Park Savannah without conflicting views and annual congestion.
Steelbands dubbed as the only musical discovery in the 20th century still to drum up a beat for making money at massive yearly Panorama show. Sympathy for the pan fraternity as the steelband is the only carnival music dispensed freely on Jouvert morning.
Topics that I have dealt with in this column are intertwined as ingredients to be tackled in the bid for a vibrant and meaningful tourist industry. I have outlined the bubble theory free of charge.