Incoming Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) president Gregor Nassief says Caribbean Airlines’ (CAL) decision to discontinue and scale back several regional routes will have a significant impact on Dominica’s tourism sector and wider Caribbean connectivity.
Speaking with Caribbean Pulse News, Nassief described the Trinidad to Dominica link as an important regional connector and said he was disappointed by its discontinuation, noting that the route played a role well beyond leisure travel.
His comments come after Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, Eli Zakour, revealed in the country’s Senate on May 22 that CAL would be restructuring several Eastern Caribbean services due to mounting financial losses.
The Trinidad–Dominica service, launched in 2023 as part of CAL’s Eastern Caribbean expansion strategy, recorded a loss of US$0.73 million up to April 2026, according to Zakour.
Zakour said the airline will discontinue its non-stop Guyana and Suriname service, which recorded an overall loss of US$1.24 million as of April 2026. CAL will also cease its St Kitts route, which incurred losses of US$1.65 million.
CAL stopped flying to those routes from June 1.
In addition, services to Martinique and Guadeloupe will be reduced from four weekly flights to two, with those routes generating losses of US$1.23 million and US$1.86 million respectively.
Across its wider network, CAL posted US$18.84 million (over TT$128 million) in combined losses from several unprofitable routes during the same period.
Nassief acknowledged the financial pressures facing the airline but argued that the Dominica may not have been given enough time to reach maturity.
“I think that any new route needed time to grow and to become profitable,” he said. “And I fear that the potential of this route was not given sufficient time.”
The Dominica hotelier, who operates Secret Bay and Fort Young Hotel, said the service supported a wide range of essential travel beyond tourism.
“I think there are a lot of student, medical and family travel between the two islands. There are leisure travel and corporate travel both ways, so it’s a significant blow to Dominica to have lost that route,” he said.
He added that the route also helped unlock opportunities for multi-destination tourism across the region, allowing visitors to combine multiple Caribbean experiences in a single trip.
“When a route like this gets cancelled, it’s almost devastating because it not only hurts traffic between the two islands, but it also hurts the opportunity for multi-destination travel,” he said.
Nassief pointed to the route’s value as a key connector for visitors travelling from North America, particularly through Port of Spain.
“It was one of the most efficient ways for someone to come from Canada to Dominica through Port of Spain,” he said. “It was also one of the most efficient ways for someone to fly from JFK to Dominica through Port of Spain because we don’t have any direct service to JFK or Toronto.”
He said the latest cuts highlight a longstanding structural issue in Caribbean aviation, which is the high cost of regional travel.
As governments continue discussions on tourism resilience and economic integration, Nassief said greater focus should be placed on improving intra-regional connectivity.
“The Caribbean needs to look internally as a domestic market for tourism, for corporate, for sports, for entertainment,” he said.
“We really need to work on having affordable and efficient interconnectivity between the islands.”
He also criticised the level of taxes and fees applied to regional air travel, arguing that they act as a barrier to movement and growth.
“It’s two decades overdue,” he said. “For me, it is crazy that as a region we tax our travellers up to 50 per cent, while the average international tax is 15 per cent, and we make it so difficult for our own people to travel.”
Nassief said the region is losing out on significant economic opportunities as a result.
“I believe the revenue being lost to the Caribbean by making inter-regional travel so cost prohibitive is in the billions,” he said.
He added that high travel costs are also limiting the region’s ability to build stronger multi-destination tourism products and attract long-haul visitors from emerging markets such as Brazil, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates.
“The opportunity we are denying ourselves as a region, for me, is just crazy,” he said. “It does not make sense and we have to try to change that.”
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