Tobago hoteliers embrace Sandals experience

And that mind-set persisted until the group stepped off the Liat turbo prop aircraft at the Maurice Bishop International airport, Grenada and boarded the mini-bus to the Sandals LaSource Resort, Grenada, which was located roughly five minutes away from the airport.

Then, everything changed. The resort was simply visually stunning.

From the moment, the van drove through the gates and past the security checkpoint, which stood out from the tropical bushes of bougainvillea and other exotic flower stands which lined the sprawling grounds, to the welcome patio, the group was mesmerised by the sheer beauty of the Six Star Diamond Award resort.

And after a sumptuous lunch at one of the resorts ten dining restaurants, the group was then whisked away to the official St Georges residence of Grenadian Prime Minister, Dr Keith Mitchell, who described the Sandals resort chain as a major game changer to the Grenadian tourism industry.

(See Pg 11)

Then it was back to the resort where the group was given their key cards and informed that their luggage had been placed in their rooms, each of which was self-contained with mini refrigerator, cable TV, air conditioning, ceiling fan, coffee and tea maker, iron and ironing board, and IPod docking station.

The resort, which lies on 17 acres of land, boasts some 257 rooms and suites and is divided into four villages- the Pink Gin village; the South Seas village; the Italian village and the Lovers Hideaway village.

By the time the group had unpacked and wandered into a large open-air wooden structure fondly known as the ‘Living Room’ which boasted a premium bar, coffee and tea station, booking agent for tours and various outdoors game boards such as table tennis, for their dinner choice options, it was clear that they all wanted a Sandals experience for Tobago

President of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association, Christopher James, laid the case in much simpler terms.

“Tourism at the moment is very down, we have lost further international arrivals, our figures last year was 22,345 international arrivals and to give you a comparison, Grenada had a 133,000 international arrivals,” James said, adding, “we are in pretty bad shape.”

“At the moment in Tobago, we are trying, we do have two additional winter flights, we’ve been relying quite heavily on domestic tourism but even that is down, we have seen about a five to six percent decrease in Trinidadian coming to Tobago so that coupled with a decrease on international arrivals, we have nowhere near the occupancy that Grenada has,” he said, adding, “this hotel I am told is 90 plus percent full.”

“We have hotels in Tobago reporting five percent occupancy so we have very unsustainably low occupancy in Tobago,” James said before noting that just one decade ago, Tobago had been outperforming Grenada in tourist arrivals but this has since been reversed.

“Sandals is of benefit to Tobago, they now have daily American flights on JetBlue, and also two flights a week from Delta, so that market which we don’t even cover in Tobago, would be available to Tobago if Sandals came,” he said.

‘I have actually spoken to five other islands that have Sandals and they have all increased airlift on the back of Sandals coming,” he said before noting that Tobago did not have any United States airlines flying directly to the island and had to ‘dilute’ its dependency on the European market.

And regarding the Sandals LaSource resort, he described the visit as a ‘shock’ seeing the resort’s occupancy rate in the 90 percent range in a traditionally slow September period.

Also voicing support was Smart Foods Caribbean managing director, Darilyn Smart, who noted that given enough time, Tobagonian suppliers would be prepared to supply the resort with services and food stuff.

“There is lots of opportunity for Tobago but whether Tobago is ready, the answer is no, it would, however, take some time for the whole construction of the resort to take place and then we can make ourselves ready,” she said.

“I am in support of it,’ she said.