Vis­i­tors to Trinidad and To­ba­go spent more this year dur­ing Car­ni­val 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Car­ni­val 2025 re­port re­leased on Wednes­day, April 2, vis­i­tors spent $668,060,354.40 dur­ing the event from Feb­ru­ary 14 to March 4, 2025

This rep­re­sent­ed a $34 mil­lion in­crease over the $634 mil­lion that was re­port­ed in the Min­istry’s 2024 re­port.

The Min­istry hailed Car­ni­val 2025 as a re­sound­ing suc­cess in the re­port with Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell stat­ing, “Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to be a pow­er­ful tes­ta­ment to our cul­ture’s glob­al ap­peal. De­spite ini­tial con­cerns about vis­i­tor ar­rivals, the over­whelm­ing turnout demon­strates the strength of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s her­itage and the pow­er of the Car­ni­val brand.” He said the coun­try’s re­turns dur­ing the sea­son un­der­scored the glob­al ap­peal of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture.

The re­port said, “Be­yond its vi­brant dis­play of cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty, Car­ni­val 2025 gen­er­at­ed seis­mic eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty —pro­vid­ing cru­cial in­come op­por­tu­ni­ties across mul­ti­ple sec­tors. From lo­cal ar­ti­sans and per­form­ers to hos­pi­tal­i­ty and event man­age­ment, its in­flu­ence ex­tend­ed be­yond com­merce, there­by strength­en­ing na­tion­al iden­ti­ty, fos­ter­ing so­cial uni­ty, and am­pli­fy­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tourism and cul­tur­al of­fer­ings. The fes­ti­val’s abil­i­ty to merge eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion with cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion reaf­firms its role as a pow­er­ful dri­ver of na­tion­al progress.”

The Min­istry added Car­ni­val was a pow­er­house for T&T’s econ­o­my, fu­elling growth across the tourism, en­ter­tain­ment and cre­ative in­dus­tries.

The re­port stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to da­ta from an ex­it sur­vey con­duct­ed by Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL), the av­er­age ex­pen­di­ture per vis­i­tor that ar­rived via air was es­ti­mat­ed at $15,336, a mar­gin­al in­crease over the 2024 av­er­age of $15,313.

Pre­lim­i­nary da­ta pre­sent­ed in the re­port sug­gest­ed that this in­crease in spend­ing oc­curred de­spite a slight drop in in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors by air for the sea­son.

The re­port stat­ed, “Pre­lim­i­nary ar­rival da­ta for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od is es­ti­mat­ed at 41,022, with an av­er­age of 2,159 per­sons per day. Air ar­rivals peaked the last week be­fore Car­ni­val, with the num­ber of dai­ly ar­rivals on Feb­ru­ary 26 and 28, 2025, ap­prox­i­mat­ing 3,500. It is to be not­ed that the fi­nal da­ta is not yet avail­able and is sub­ject to change as all flights have not been ac­count­ed for.”

No­tably in this da­ta, 28,162 of the 41,022 vis­i­tors to the coun­try, from the pe­ri­od Feb­ru­ary 14 to March 4, 2025, were said to be non-na­tion­als with the re­main­ing 12,860 ex­plained to be re­turn­ing na­tion­als or part of the di­as­po­ra. Ac­cord­ing to the 2024 re­port, there were more non-na­tion­als in the 41,444 vis­i­tors that ar­rived by air last year, as it re­port­ed 29,651 non-na­tion­als. How­ev­er, few­er vis­i­tors from the di­as­po­ra (11,793) ar­rived last year.

Da­ta pro­vid­ed from Visa last week, how­ev­er, claimed that vis­i­tors to Trinidad Car­ni­val in­creased this year.

Visa said in a re­lease, “There was an in­crease in in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers to Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the Car­ni­val 2025 dates, with a ten per cent growth in cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions made in the coun­try dur­ing these fes­tiv­i­ties, com­pared to the Car­ni­val dates from the pre­vi­ous year. The high­est vol­ume of in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions dur­ing Car­ni­val 2025 came from vis­i­tors from Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Unit­ed King­dom. Top prod­uct cat­e­gories for in­ter­na­tion­al tourists in­clud­ed air­lines, fast food restau­rants and restau­rants.”

Visa had al­so not­ed an in­crease in trans­ac­tions by 30 per cent, while ac­cord­ing to an analy­sis from Visa Con­sult­ing & An­a­lyt­ics (VCA), on­line Visa trans­ac­tions showed sus­tained growth with a more than 75 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

The Min­istry re­port in­di­cat­ed a surge in cruise ar­rivals, wel­com­ing 3,311 cruise ship pas­sen­gers to the Port of Port-of-Spain and 10,615 pas­sen­gers to To­ba­go for a to­tal of 13,926 vis­i­tors for the pe­ri­od.

The re­port stat­ed, “Cruise ships to Trinidad in­clud­ed the Rhap­sody of the Seas (EPIC Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence) and Ex­plo­ra 2. To­ba­go wel­comed the Cos­ta For­tu­na and Marel­la Voy­ager which made mul­ti­ple calls to the is­land.”

As had be­come the norm, the Min­istry got some da­ta on US ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing the sea­son via EPIC.

The re­port stat­ed, “This cruise call pro­vid­ed a cru­cial sup­ple­ment to on­shore room and board op­tions at the var­i­ous ho­tels and oth­er lo­cal ac­com­mo­da­tions dur­ing the peak Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. Ac­cord­ing to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO), Epic Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence, the ves­sel docked with 1,200 pas­sen­gers. An ad­di­tion­al 300 board­ed in Trinidad. Pas­sen­gers at­tend­ed at least four (4) dif­fer­ent events, in­clud­ing: “Duck Work”, “Machel Mon­tano and Davi­do”, “So­ca Brain­wash”, “Panora­ma”, and “J’ou­vert with Co­coa Dev­ils”. To­tal pas­sen­ger ex­pen­di­ture for these events was ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.2 mil­lion (TT$8 mil­lion).”

The Min­istry re­port added with re­gard to EPIC’s con­tri­bu­tion, “Be­yond event at­ten­dance, the ma­jor­i­ty of pas­sen­gers played mas with four (4) of the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar bands: Tribe, Bliss, Lost Tribe and Yu­ma, in­ject­ing a fur­ther US$1.44 mil­lion (TT$9.79 mil­lion) in the econ­o­my. Dur­ing the Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties - Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 28, 2025 to Wednes­day March 5, 2025, pas­sen­gers ex­pend­ed an av­er­age of US$100 per day on food, craft and gift items, plus US$25 per day on trans­porta­tion, a to­tal of US$900,000 (TT$6.12 mil­lion).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 40 per cent of pas­sen­gers spent an ex­tra US$400 in ser­vices such as: Hair styling, make-up, and cos­tume de­liv­ery ser­vices, amount­ing to US$192,000 (TT$1.3 mil­lion). Fur­ther­more, EPIC al­so in­ject­ed sig­nif­i­cant funds in­to the lo­cal econ­o­my, pay­ing US$500,000 (TT$3.4 mil­lion) to lo­cal staff, tal­ent, pro­duc­tion teams, se­cu­ri­ty, trans­porta­tion providers (Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion, lo­cal max­is), me­dia com­pa­nies and mar­ket­ing part­ners.”

The re­port added that port fees and as­so­ci­at­ed dock­ing costs in Trinidad and To­ba­go were not in­clud­ed in these pre­lim­i­nary fi­nan­cial fig­ures.

The CEO of EPIC Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence re­port­ed an es­ti­mat­ed US$5 mil­lion, or TT$34 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed lo­cal­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

The Min­istry con­firmed that EPIC has in­di­cat­ed plans to re­turn for the next three years, (2026, 2027 and 2028).

The Min­istry’s da­ta al­so sug­gest­ed sen­ti­ments shared by pro­mot­ers and band­lead­ers that fetes and Car­ni­val events saw bet­ter turnouts than pre­vi­ous years as NCC events, in­clud­ing Di­manche Gras, the Ju­nior Pa­rade of Bands and the se­nior Pa­rade of Band,s all saw larg­er at­ten­dances. The John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage al­so saw a 10,000 in­crease with over 100,000 pa­trons in 2025, the re­port said.

Min­is­ter Mitchell said he would con­tin­ue to push for im­prove­ment dur­ing the sea­son.

He said, “In­spired by the ex­tra­or­di­nary suc­cess of 2025, the Min­istry and its stake­hold­ers re­main com­mit­ted to el­e­vat­ing the Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence to even greater heights. We will con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on key process­es that will serve to en­hance the ex­pe­ri­ence in the fu­ture for both par­tic­i­pants and pa­trons. Col­lab­o­ra­tion among ho­tels, air­lines, pro­mot­ers and band lead­ers will be in­stru­men­tal in ex­pand­ing the fes­ti­val’s reach and en­sure a seam­less and mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence for all.”