Post by ferryfast admin on Nov 26, 2007 13:04:06 GMT -5
Record 744,000 travel on ferries in 10 months
Earl Manmohan Scarborough
Trinidad Express
www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161241226
Monday, November 26th 2007
A record 744,000 people travelled between Tobago and Trinidad with the fast ferry service for the first ten months of this year.
And Port Authority officials envision that another 100,000 will do so by the time the year ends next month.
Tourism Secretary Neil Wilson in disclosing these figures told the Tobago News in an interview last week that another 600,000 used the airbridge during the same period.
He added that the use of both the air and sea bridges would top the 1.5 million mark this year and this represented a 50 per cent increase over last year.
Wilson noted that the record usage of the seabridge was achieved although the T&T Spirit did not come into service until late this year and the T&T Express was on its annual mandatory dry-docking for a month.
He said there was still potential to develop this market and he was optimistic that close to two million would use the facilities between the islands next year. "That's a huge amount of people travelling and no where in the Caribbean this was so," he added.
He said Barbados had only 500,000 travellers a year and noted there was a 29 per cent drop in regional travel this year.
The new ferry terminal at the Port of Spain port, which was put into use last Monday has eased the congestion experienced by travellers at the old terminal nearby.
Wilson said Delta Airlines was on track for its inaugural flight between Atlanta and Crown Point on December 15.
He said the flight will bring in a number of business people and journalists who will spend a few days taking in what Tobago had to offer visitors.
He said a similar visit will be made in January to Atlanta, Georgia by a group from Tobago.
He said the carousel for use in the extended arrival hall at Crown Point was already in the country and would be installed shortly and this would shorten the checking time for travellers.
Meanwhile, he said the $6 million temporary structure to increase the space for use by passengers was well advanced.
Construction was being done by H Lewis Construction with the Airports Authority acting as project managers on behalf of the Assembly, which was financing the project.