Tobago's rooms with a view.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Americas !Ojo!

DESCRIBED MORE than forty years ago in Fodor's 1960 Guide to the Caribbean as "Trinidad's beautiful stepchild," laid-back Tobago is bracing for an unprecedented hotel construction boom that could change the island's character dramatically.

Last November, Hilton International's newest Caribbean property, the $35 million Hilton Tobago, officially opened for business following more than a year of delays. The splashy new two-hundred-room hotel dwarfs Tobago's other resorts, which are mainly small, exclusive cottages and villas of no more than twenty or thirty units apiece.

Georg Weinlaender, the Hilton's general manager, says as many as five more big hotels could rise in Tobago over the next few years, as tourists discover the charms of this island known more for bird sanctuaries and deep-sea diving than for the all-inclusive resorts so typical of Jamaica, the Bahamas, and other leading Caribbean destinations.

"Tobago is a sleeping giant," says the Austrian-born Weinlaender. "This island has so much to offer. It's unspoiled, the people are friendly, the crime rate is very low, and it has a rain forest, and incredible diving."

Aside from the Hilton, two of Tobago's newest smaller, exclusive properties are Stonehaven Villas and Blue Haven Hotel, both of which opened their doors last December. Stonehaven is located just outside the village of Black Rock, on the south end of Tobago. The resort, which offers spectacular views of Buccoo Reef in the distance, adjoins the Grafton Estate bird sanctuary with its forest trails and afternoon bird-feeding. Not far from Stonehaven is the Blue Haven Hotel, overlooking a beach where, according to author Daniel Defoe, explorer Robinson Crusoe was stranded on September 30, 1659.

"This hotel was part of Fort King George. We even have one cannon on site," says assistant manager Raj Boodram. "It was built in the late 1930s and early forties. In those days, the hotel was composed of twenty-seven rooms, and we had the biggest swimming pool in the Caribbean. This hotel also had the first elevator in Tobago."

Last year, after lying dormant for about twenty-five years, owners Karl and Marilyn Pilstl...