Where did Easter visitors to Tobago sleep?

THE EDITOR: Tobago has a population of 60,000. Before the Easter weekend we were told that police on the island expected approximately 120,000 Trinidadians to visit Tobago that weekend. We heard later on the media that 100,000 Trinidadians had visited the sister isle.

With a population of 60,000, where did those 100,000 Trinidadians sleep? On the beach? Well maybe, but…

Caribbean Airlines told us that from April 14 to 18 the airline carried 5,767 passengers and operated 120 flights on the domestic air bridge. That figure would imply 2,883 passengers going each way by plane.

The TT Inter-Island Ferry Service in a release on April 22 gave a figure of 28,900 passengers transported between the islands between April 10 and 20. That is 14,450 Trinidadians visiting Tobago by ferry. Combine the plane and ferry passengers and you get 17,333 visitors arriving in Tobago.

Let us say CAL or the ferry company were out by a factor of two and we double the numbers over the time period, we would now get 34,666 Trinidadian visitors over the Easter weekend. So, how did the other 65,334 Trinidadian visitors get to Tobago? Did they swim?

Nobody questions these numbers when given. And this is not the first time though. In previous years we have heard about how many hundreds of thousands of visitors came to Trinidad for Carnival, and when you look at the available flights that figure is impossible.

J SMITH

St Augustine