Increase in tourist arrivals for 2019

As of December 2019, Tobago's tourism industry recorded an 8.2 per cent increase over 2018 in international visitor arrivals.In making the announcement on Thursday, Louis Lewis, CEO, Tobago Tourism Agency Ltd, said the percentage represents the largest increase in seven years."That is a tremensous achievement from a destination perspective and it only happened because of the strategic marketing and the collaboration between the agency and the stakeholders – the hotel properties and the operators, our special niche market services," he told reporters during a news conference at the agency's Scarborough headquarters."It is when that combination comes together that we can be effective and for the first time, we are able to announce that having gone through a full year of service programming and promotions that we can see a turnaround in what used to be a slide in arrivals, to actual growth."Lewis added: "it is more than just an incident. It is actually a change in the tide and we are hoping to continue that momentum for us to continue to go forward."He said from a geographic market perspective, the UK market actually increased by 6.7 per cent "and we think that is phenomenal considering particularly because the UK market is our largest."We also saw some significant increase out of Germany, an increase of 12 per cent and the rest of Europe, numbers actually increased by 7.4."Lewis said nothwithstanding those positive signs, the star performer has been the Canadian market."We saw arrivals go up by a couple hundred per cent. But more importantly, an increase of 1,948 visitors. That is squarely associated with the strategic alignment between our marketing in Canada, the Sunwing Airline and the Starfish property I think that really signals that that aligned strategy really works."Lewis said the agency also appointed representatives in Germany and the Scandanavian region - a move he believes assisted tremendously in increasing tourist arrivals to the island.