De­spite a mas­sive re­duc­tion in ex­pec­ta­tions, To­ba­go Car­ni­val band­lead­ers are al­ready see­ing sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in their num­bers for the sec­ond-ever To­ba­go Car­ni­val com­pared to the in­au­gur­al host­ing of the event last year.

In­ter­im pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion (TO­CA), Dex­ter Sandy, told the Busi­ness Guardian that stake­hold­ers learned to cater their prod­uct af­ter over­es­ti­mat­ing the de­mand for last year’s event, the in­au­gur­al host­ing of To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val.

“I would say that in the first year, many of the bands had high­er ex­pec­ta­tions in terms of turnout of mas­quer­aders. Most bands were cater­ing for an ex­cess of five or 600 mas­quer­aders. Some even catered for up to 1,200 to 1,500 mas­quer­aders. But the re­al­i­ty last year, I think the largest band had just about 300 where­as the oth­ers were av­er­ag­ing about 100 to prob­a­bly 140 mas­quer­aders each,” Sandy said, “The ma­jor­i­ty of us I would say ba­si­cal­ly broke down our ex­pec­ta­tions cater­ing for about 200 mas­quer­aders. So the larg­er bands are cater­ing for about 200. But I know one band in par­tic­u­lar is cater­ing for 500 and they are close to those fig­ures in terms of reg­is­tra­tion. The small­er bands you will usu­al­ly see prob­a­bly be­tween 60 to 75 mas­quer­aders per band, which is what we have been fore­cast­ing and we should be able to get that this year.”

Sandy’s band, Icon­ic Mas re­port­ed a 35-40 per cent in­crease in reg­is­tra­tion while Jade Mon­key Mas, who once again col­lab­o­rat­ed with pop­u­lar T&T Car­ni­val band Ron­nie and Caro, al­so re­port­ed in­creased reg­is­tra­tion and in­ter­est.

“In terms of num­bers, Jade Mon­key mas got a slight in­crease,” said Ron­nie McIn­tosh, band­leader of Ron­nie and Caro, “(with) the for­eign-based mas­quer­aders, there has been a slight in­crease and al­so be­ing on the ground, more Tri­nis are at­tend­ing. They may not be play­ing the mas, but they are go­ing across to see.”

Sandy con­firmed that bands took a more cau­tious ap­proach about the event this year, and even scaled back their pur­chas­es based on what they were see­ing from their reg­is­tra­tion num­bers. How­ev­er, with tar­gets so far be­ing met and sales be­ing boost­ed by the es­tab­lish­ment of a band house by TO­CA at the Shaw Park fa­cil­i­ty, the bands are grow­ing in op­ti­mism.

“Every­body got a lift in sales. They were now able to go and pur­chase the raw ma­te­ri­als for these two weeks here of pro­duc­tion. They were now able to ful­fil those pur­chase re­quests. So peo­ple are more cau­tious this year in terms of spend in prepa­ra­tion for the sale of cos­tumes, as well as al­so prepa­ra­tions for the road. Based on the reg­is­tra­tion you would know what size of mu­sic truck you need to sup­port your band. So dif­fer­ent sizes of mu­sic trucks, dif­fer­ent cost struc­tures, even in terms of the lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty as you have to hire the num­ber of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in or­der things like that. The per­sons are a lot more con­scious this year. Based on reg­is­tra­tions, rather than us­ing high un­re­al­is­tic pro­jec­tions,” he said.

There were al­so ad­just­ments in ex­pec­ta­tions by fete pro­mot­ers, who too learnt from last year’s ex­pe­ri­ence where sev­er­al events were can­celled out­right or failed to gar­ner sig­nif­i­cant au­di­ences.

“There has been a dras­tic re­duc­tion in the num­ber of pre–Car­ni­val Week­end fetes. From the cal­en­dar I am see­ing prob­a­bly just about 15 to 20 fetes which spanned 10 days lead­ing up to the Car­ni­val week­end. Last year, you would have seen prob­a­bly about 40 to 50 which would have in­clud­ed boat rides and events on land and I think last year be­cause it was a first year. Per­sons thought that To­ba­go was go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing very sim­i­lar to what Port of Spain ex­pe­ri­ences in terms of the num­ber of peo­ple that would come to par­ty and would take part in the pre-Car­ni­val fetes. They had high ex­pec­ta­tions. This time around. It’s been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced. You’ve seen a lot less pro­mot­ers in the space do­ing events. They are a bit more strate­gic in do­ing the type of events that they’re of­fer­ing. So def­i­nite­ly a re­duc­tion in that,” said Sandy.

Those events al­so had to com­pete with Bur­na Boy’s con­cert per­for­mance at the To­ba­go Mu­sic, Arts and Cul­ture Fes­ti­val (TOMAC) con­cert.

Sandy said while the event it­self was not a part of the To­ba­go Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, it did help gen­er­ate need­ed mo­men­tum for the Car­ni­val by at­tract­ing vis­i­tors dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“What the Bur­na Boy event did. It brought a lot of traf­fic to the is­land. Some of the traf­fic came pri­mar­i­ly for the Bur­na boy and they left right af­ter but a good bit of the traf­fic stayed, and they were able to spec­tate when it came to the Pa­rade of the Bands and the J’ou­vert. Those who stayed were able to par­tic­i­pate sam­ple what was the of­fer­ing for To­ba­go. And I guess that would have trans­lat­ed in­to some of the fig­ures that we are see­ing this year,” said Sandy, who ex­plained that some who were ex­posed to the To­ba­go Car­ni­val as a byprod­uct of at­tend­ing the con­cert have now re­turned as mas­quer­aders.

He felt as a re­sult a large event serv­ing as a ful­crum to the Car­ni­val could stand to ben­e­fit the fes­ti­val in the long run.

How­ev­er less than two weeks be­fore the event, Sandy ad­mit­ted that very lit­tle had been re­vealed con­cern­ing the spend­ing of the $12.5 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the event. Sandy said TO­CA had mo­bilised as a re­sult of the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion com­ing to them from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, cul­mi­nat­ing with the es­tab­lish­ment of the band house at Shaw Park.

“There has been a lack of mar­ket­ing from the ear­li­er months. When we re­alised Ju­ly start­ed and we didn’t see any­thing com­ing out from the THA with re­gards to mar­ket­ing and then Au­gust start­ed the same thing. That’s when TO­CA would have been formed when we as bands re­alised that there was a lack of mar­ket­ing from that side of stake­hold­er the gov­ern­ment and we need­ed to band to­geth­er to do some­thing on our own to have not­ed buzz and cre­ate some aware­ness,” Sandy said.

“But with the bud­get be­ing an­nounced, out­side of mar­ket­ing we are still wait­ing to get the feed­back as to where the mon­ey’s go­ing to be spent. I mean we are aware there is cer­tain in­fra­struc­ture that they’re go­ing to put in place on the streets. We knew that it’d be al­so through that fund­ing the THA would usu­al­ly pro­vide some mu­sic trucks for bands to be able to use on the road, which is the norm but they haven’t made a pub­lic state­ment ex­act­ly as to how that $12.5 mil­lion is go­ing to be spent across the fes­ti­val. “

Both Sandy and McIn­tosh, how­ev­er, hailed the fact that ahead of the event, there had been in­creased ser­vice along both the air­bridge and the Seabridge.

“I have seen an im­prove­ment with Caribbean Air­lines. They added on flights much ear­li­er than last year. So ku­dos to them as well. Even the fer­ry, they had their ad­di­tion­al sail­ings in place ear­li­er than last year,” said McIn­tosh.

Sandy not­ed that these ad­di­tions had al­lowed him to book re­turn tick­ets for mas­quer­aders last week, but he still hoped that the an­nounce­ments of these flights and sail­ings would come ear­li­er so that mas­quer­aders could feel more as­sured about trav­el­ling for the Car­ni­val.