Next week­end, the cul­tur­al and en­ter­tain­ment fo­cus shifts to To­ba­go, as the third edi­tion of the is­land’s Car­ni­val shifts in­to high gear.

There are promis­ing signs that the event is be­gin­ning to come in­to its own but the chal­lenge is for To­ba­go Car­ni­val to carve out a dis­tinct niche among the many West In­di­an-style car­ni­vals that take place through­out the year.

The biggest hur­dle to be crossed is en­sur­ing that this fes­ti­val does not end up be­com­ing a cook­ie-cut­ter spin-off of what we Tri­nis feel is the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals, which is just a few months away. That calls for a de­gree of cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion, as well as a har­ness­ing of the unique fea­tures that set To­ba­go apart from its sis­ter is­land, Trinidad.

To­ba­go is still strug­gling to re­build a tourism sec­tor that had been suf­fer­ing set­backs long be­fore COVID-19 made the sit­u­a­tion much worse. While there has been some re­cov­ery, there is still a long road ahead for the sec­tor to be­come a sol­id pil­lar of the is­land’s econ­o­my.

The Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val can con­tribute to that re­cov­ery by bring­ing in vis­i­tors in suf­fi­cient num­bers, drawn by To­ba­go’s au­then­tic cul­tur­al of­fer­ings.

How­ev­er, there has to be a sus­tained ef­fort by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the var­i­ous agen­cies in­volved in pro­duc­ing the an­nu­al fes­ti­val — the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion; To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed; To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion; the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion and the To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion.

So far, the event seems to have boost­ed do­mes­tic tourism. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17,000 peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in To­ba­go over the next few days on the seabridge alone. To meet an in­creas­ing de­mand, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) is adding more sail­ings and there are al­so like­ly to be ad­di­tion­al flights on the air­bridge.

A few days ago, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) pres­i­dent Al­pha Lorde re­port­ed al­most 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy at small­er prop­er­ties on the is­land that com­prise 15 rooms or less. Larg­er prop­er­ties were not do­ing as well but there were hopes of a last-minute surge in book­ings.

So far, the thou­sands of vis­i­tors set to con­verge on To­ba­go for the long week­end of rev­el­ry seem to be most­ly Trinida­di­ans, rather than the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors need­ed for the long-term suc­cess of the fes­ti­val.

If that is the case, then the agen­cies and in­ter­est groups in­volved in the fes­ti­val need to ramp up their ef­forts, not on­ly to mar­ket the event but to en­sure there is suf­fi­cient air­lift and qual­i­ty ac­com­mo­da­tion.

Those are ar­eas where his­tor­i­cal­ly, this coun­try has nev­er man­aged to achieve the stan­dards set in neigh­bour­ing tourist-de­pen­dent Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

A prop­er­ly planned, mar­ket­ed and ex­e­cut­ed To­ba­go Car­ni­val could be a game chang­er, bring­ing more at­ten­tion to the des­ti­na­tion and its many at­trac­tions.

How­ev­er, there is an­oth­er chal­lenge to be con­front­ed. To­ba­go’s 25th mur­der of the year oc­curred just a few days ahead of the fes­ti­val.

In the past, ran­dom in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed tourism on the is­land, so the cur­rent de­scent in­to gang vi­o­lence could un­der­mine ef­forts to in­crease in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tor ar­rivals. That is why it is so im­por­tant for the fes­tiv­i­ties over the next few days to be safe and in­ci­dent-free.

This is To­ba­go’s mo­ment to shine with four mem­o­rable days of rev­el­ry and colour.