Our recent conversation with Adam Stewart shows willingness to take up the Sandals ‘opportunity’. Are we that ready? As appetite for room capacity and other bits of tourism apparatus grows, Tobago needs to understand at the same time, how much tourism it can actually handle. Sustainable growth is not simply a case of hoteliers and business owners making runways for their personal cause: It concerns near, medium and longterm impact on all aspects of local life: Including lifestyle and natural environment.
Given getting it wrong is not worth the experience, it stands to reason every adult individual with a stake in Tobago’s future should dig deep and ask a few things of themselves and the tourism pathway decision-makers. Like:
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What forms of tourism development are most appropriate for Tobago?
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What is needed to enable the development of these forms of tourism?
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What are the tourism marketing priorities for Tobago?
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In terms of tourism development, what are the priorities for infrastructural improvements on Tobago?
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What aspects of Tobago are particularly vulnerable to tourism influences?
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How can we minimise the impact of increased numbers of tourists on Tobago?
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What is an appropriate and realistic annual rate of growth for arrivals to Tobago?
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How might the human resource development needs of Tobago best be addressed?
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What functions should all Tobago tourism focussed organisations have in common?
Note. The questions above were scraped from the experience of communities with similar geography. Keep in mind that copy/pasted development paths never work; each place and people are unique. Keep in mind that true sustainable development is SIMPLY reconciling a society’s development ambitions within its environmental limits. If we get that right then life is good.
Our call: As a long time stakeholder Environment Tobago would like to understand what the public is thinking re: big hotel builds and the collective future. To aid this we have provided a short no-name-required survey - using the same questions up top. At the end of April we shall close the survey and publish the gist of that understanding throughout the month of May.