Business View Caribbean l March 2023

90 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 10, ISSUE 2 agency, the TCIAA has transformed from a basic authority managing facilities with a yearly throughput of over 1.3 million passengers. Although this is a remarkable feat, our capacity is already outgrown, so we are embarking on a lot of development, including growing people, infrastructure, resources, and systems to catch up to the rapid growth seen in the Turks and Caicos Islands over the last decade. Business View Magazine: Let’s jump into operations. How many employees does the authority employ, and does it have multiple locations? Godfrey Smith: We have multiple airport locations that fall under our mandate. These have minimal staff, with most having less than a hundred staff members. The brunt of the authority’s staff is in Providenciales, which is the center of the authority’s operations. Besides administrative staff, all facilities have other support From a budgetary allowance perspective, we employ 420, although we are still recruiting for white and blue-collar areas. Business View Magazine: part of the aviation infrastructure in the country, who would you say is the authority’s typical customer, and what services do you provide them? Godfrey Smith: As an authority, every entity we interact with is a customer to some degree. For example, Customs and Immigration and Border Control are governmental agencies, but in many ways, are customers of the Airports Authority. Similarly, they consider the Airports Authority and its passengers their customers. However, the ultimate customer is the passengers and airlines because they constitute the authority’s bread and butter. Our interactions with these two parties generate revenue for the authority through service agreements, passenger fees,