Monstrosity will spoil Charlotteville

This is not a small collection of booths for selling arts and crafts and local food, as you might expect, but an enormous concrete monstrosity which would look more at home next to Movie Towne.

Do the people running Tobago’s tourism product have any idea what they are doing? Do they understand tourism at all? Before I married a Trini, and lived and worked in Trinidad, I was a tourist to TT . I know what appeals to visitors. Tobago’s laid-back vibe and Charlotteville in particular were unlike anywhere I had ever been.

It doesn’t take long to succumb to Charlotteville’s charms. It happens before you arrive. The hilly, winding road from Speyside peaks to reveal a view of such beauty the heart skips a beat.

From a visitor’s perspective, the best part is realising that Charlotteville at ground level surpasses even the picture- postcard panorama of blue and green seen from above. As it is right now, Charlotteville provides the visitor with a Caribbean experience that is getting increasingly hard to come by anywhere else. And for Tobago, that is a priceless asset. I can say unequivocally to the Tobago House of Assembly, if you build this hideous structure, the tourists will not come. They are not interested in flying all that way to shop at a mall. It will become a concrete shell, unused, unloved, the beachfront ruined.

Tourists want peace, to lie under a coconut tree on an unspoilt beach sipping a cocktail, watching the sunset, escaping to another dimension in a sleepy fishing village.

Fifteen years ago I visited Charlotteville when a large port was mooted for the bay. I wrote an article titled “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That truth holds today.

MARK MEREDITH New Zealand