I re­cent­ly stayed in To­ba­go in a cot­tage with a huge gar­den filled with fruit trees, the own­er's play­ful dogs, a fam­i­ly of co­cori­cos flut­ter­ing in and out of tree branch­es all day in a slow, med­i­ta­tive cir­cu­lar mo­tion round the house.

Each morn­ing, a black and white striped bird with a tuft­ed crest on its head peered at our break­fasts from an over­hang­ing branch. We learned lat­er it was a barred antshrike.

It was a serene time by day. By night, the waves crashed in­to the cliffs at the bot­tom of the gar­den. Along the coast, wind­surfers belt­ed along on the coastal cur­rents in­to Mount Irvine and Grange Bay.

Just days lat­er, the PNM's Mar­tin Joseph shock­ing­ly suc­cumbed to that same strong un­der­tow. In the space of a year, the Caribbean Sea has al­so claimed the lives of BBC film­mak­er Jay Mer­ri­man-Muko­ro, who drowned in Bar­ba­dos in April and Tony Wilkin­son, part­ner of UK Guardian writer Dec­ca Aitken­head who died in Ja­maica in May while res­cu­ing his young son.

There are dan­gers for tourists in the Caribbean as there are any­where in the world. In Lon­don you'll be ripped off by taxi dri­vers, in Rome you'll be pick-pock­et­ed, in Mo­roc­co you'll be cat-called, in Amer­i­ca you'll be blind­ed by gleam­ing white teeth and deaf­ened by thun­der­ous loud voic­es.

In To­ba­go you'll be on the wrong end of a dis­tinct­ly cold shoul­der. To­bag­o­ni­ans have shoul­ders and stares so cold you could get frost­bite.

I don't feel bad say­ing it–I've been to To­ba­go more times than the av­er­age Tri­ni and I've al­ways sup­port­ed them both in writ­ing and in per­son–but I think their fu­ture plans should in­clude some in­vest­ment in friend­li­ness: per­haps the odd gen­tle smile, fond gaze or kind word.

I don't want to paint all To­bag­o­ni­ans as in­suf­fer­ably rude; they're not, some are de­light­ful. But many are too rude and un­friend­ly to let it slide.

It doesn't cost a lot to be pleas­ant, es­pe­cial­ly to guests on your is­land, es­pe­cial­ly when you live in par­adise.

But that's the twofold prob­lem right there. First­ly, wher­ev­er you are in the world in places with steady streams of tourists who know noth­ing about the des­ti­na­tion where­on they've land­ed and dis­em­barked the air­craft tense and tired to spend two weeks en­joy­ing the beach­es and spend­ing their mon­ey and then leav­ing; in such places where lo­cal economies need the tourists, it's a re­la­tion­ship that en­gen­ders feel­ings of bit­ter­ness and re­sent­ment.

I've seen it in south­ern Spain where the lo­cals de­spise drunk­en Eng­lish tourists. In Cairo and the Red Sea re­sorts of Egypt–the cra­dle of civil­i­sa­tion–now de­pen­dent on fat tourists rid­ing their stink­ing camels and buy­ing their cheap fez hats, au­then­ti­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured in Chi­na.

In To­ba­go, it al­so comes with a deep-seat­ed an­ti-colo­nial­ist men­tal­i­ty, fos­tered by the re­mem­brance of times not long ago when beach­es like Pi­geon Point were on­ly for white, Eu­ro­pean tourists, not black na­tives.

The tyran­ny of tourism and its im­pact on lo­cal at­ti­tudes is clear­ly ev­i­denced in To­ba­go sim­ply by this lit­tle ex­per­i­ment: keep dri­ving fur­ther and fur­ther away from Crown Point and the air­port and over-de­vel­oped south-west of the is­land (where it's of­ten an ef­fort to get a To­bag­on­ian to say hel­lo or an­swer a ques­tion in any­thing more than a grunt or shrug) and con­tin­ue in­to the lush hilly in­te­ri­or around Mo­ri­ah and the north­ern fish­ing tip of Char­lot­teville, you will find the pleas­ant­ness of the lo­cals in­creas­es in­cre­men­tal­ly.

The few­er sun­burnt tourists there are, the friend­lier peo­ple are. In places where you see more goats than for­eign­ers, the for­eign­er is still wel­come since they are a rar­er event, not a dai­ly oc­cur­rence or an­noy­ance.

The sec­ond part of the prob­lem is the "par­adise" part: what use is par­adise to peo­ple with no mon­ey, where fa­cil­i­ties are so bad that in­ter­net cov­er­age, cell­phone sig­nals and ra­dio sta­tions strug­gle to work prop­er­ly, where there are few jobs of any re­al in­ter­est to young peo­ple?

In those cir­cum­stances par­adise be­comes a kind of hell. Like the moody ho­tel handy­man in Wal­cott's To­ba­go-set play, Pan­tomime, who is eter­nal­ly curs­ing the colo­nial mas­ter and the last­ing ef­fects of slav­ery, To­bag­o­ni­ans too of­ten ap­pear em­bit­tered and seem to take no plea­sure from their own beau­ti­ful en­vi­ron­ment. They are, in a sense, trapped there, while the nui­sance tourists can come and go. Beach­es and mot mots are but mill­stones to the am­bi­tious To­bag­on­ian.

But look at what's re­al­ly go­ing on: our char­ter flight on Monarch from Lon­don Gatwick to ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al was less than a third full.

One hun­dred and fifty emp­ty seats, all sub­sidised by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in a des­per­ate at­tempt to keep a trick­le of tourists com­ing–against the rec­om­men­da­tions of For­eign Of­fice trav­el ad­vi­sories about crime and news sto­ries of el­der­ly Ger­man cou­ples hacked to death–so that the ho­tels don't close and the tourism trade dwin­dles to noth­ing.

T&T may not need tourism now, but it will very soon when the oil runs out and To­ba­go will need it the most � it has lit­tle else in the way of an econ­o­my.

In that sce­nario, hos­pi­tal­i­ty train­ing will be­come es­sen­tial. Frankly speak­ing, it shouldn't re­quire school­ing to be hos­pitable.