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To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion’s new­ly ap­point­ed pres­i­dent, Regi­nald Mac Lean, is pre­dict­ing an ex­treme­ly dev­as­tat­ing East­er sea­son for hote­liers on the is­land, with oc­cu­pan­cy strug­gling to reach 50 per­cent, the low­est it has been in years.

Mac Lean, in a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, said the de­cline start­ed dur­ing the peak sea­son fol­low­ing the gov­ern­ment’s de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency on De­cem­ber 30 last year.

“The sea­son has not been the best sea­son, first­ly, be­cause of the State Emer­gency,” Mac Lean said. “What the gov­ern­ment failed to re­alise when that SoE was put out was that ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight out of ten pas­sen­gers that trav­el out­side of the coun­try take out trav­el in­sur­ance, and trav­el in­sur­ance is not avail­able to peo­ple that are go­ing to a coun­try that has an SoE.”