One of the rea­sons that it is dif­fi­cult to track the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) from Car­ni­val and the cre­ative in­dus­tries is that this coun­try does not have a satel­lite ac­count­ing sys­tem set up.

That’s the rev­e­la­tion from Dr Jo-anne Tull, lec­tur­er in Car­ni­val Stud­ies at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, dur­ing an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian.
Satel­lite ac­count­ing is a term de­vel­oped by the Unit­ed Na­tions to re­fer to an ex­ten­sion of the SNA (hence, a “satel­lite” of the SNA) to mea­sure the size of eco­nom­ic sec­tors that are not de­fined as in­dus­tries in na­tion­al ac­counts. Tourism, for ex­am­ple, is an amal­gam of in­dus­tries such as trans­porta­tion, ac­com­mo­da­tion, food and bev­er­age ser­vices, recre­ation and en­ter­tain­ment, and trav­el agen­cies.

Tull said that once da­ta is not col­lect­ed it can­not be placed in­to the Cen­tral Bank ac­count­ing sys­tem. The ab­sence of a satel­lite ac­count­ing sys­tem means da­ta from the tourism, en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing get count­ed in the GDP tab­u­la­tions, but not Car­ni­val and the cre­ative in­dus­tries.

“To be able to mea­sure pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in this area is a lit­tle chal­leng­ing as you have to do macro­eco­nom­ic mod­el­ling and it is a lit­tle tough. We know a lot of steel­bands are re­hears­ing across the coun­try, which would be ac­count­ed for and every time they do that mon­ey is turn­ing around, and al­so the bars are op­er­at­ing at an in­creased lev­el for the Car­ni­val sea­son.

“It’s not to say that the satel­lite ac­count­ing sys­tem set­up can­not be done, but it will be com­plex and what will hap­pen is that they would go down the road of prob­a­bly try­ing to do it for some­thing like the mu­sic and film in­dus­try first,” she ex­plained.

Delv­ing fur­ther as to how T&T’s Car­ni­val can be ex­port­ed and gen­er­ate much-need­ed for­eign ex­change, Tull said that must be a crit­i­cal el­e­ment.  

“I think the emerg­ing as­pects of the ecosys­tem need to be tend­ed to. Ex­port is about peo­ple be­ing able to car­ry their brand aes­thet­ic to an­oth­er coun­try. We need to look at oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond that to try and make the ecosys­tem more bal­anced again,” she out­lined.

Tull in­di­cat­ed that it is about har­ness­ing, cre­at­ing av­enues, and the op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth that would lead to ex­port.  

On the brand­ing and mar­ket­ing side, the lec­tur­er of Car­ni­val Stud­ies said mar­ket­ing is very much tied to that as­pect of eco­nom­ics be­cause mar­ket­ing is about how it dri­ves de­mand and what would be need­ed to sup­ply in a nu­anced way to get that de­mand.  

“What is al­so need­ed is a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the strat­e­gy, on how the prod­uct is mar­ket­ed, as the same method done in pre­vi­ous years can­not be adopt­ed.”

Asked if the au­then­tic Car­ni­val el­e­ment is be­ing lost, Tull said “no.” But she did say the au­then­tic el­e­ment may be suf­fer­ing, as in­creas­ing­ly peo­ple for the longest time have been com­plain­ing about events and the fact that events were no longer like how Car­ni­val events used to be.

“Our nat­ur­al cul­tur­al prac­tices where fete and en­joy­ing Car­ni­val is con­cerned is that we end up with an over-com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion.  We end up with some­thing that seems over­ly pack­aged and it los­es the pa­tron who is re­al­ly at the end of the day this West In­di­an or this Trin­bag­on­ian who just wants to en­joy the Car­ni­val as a lot of these songs would pin­point,” she de­tailed.

Al­so, Tull not­ed that the her­itage, the tra­di­tion­al mass, needs to be sup­port­ed more in terms of find­ing a way to mix of con­tem­po­rary ways of en­ter­tain­ment with them.

“I al­so feel there is a way in which we could be hav­ing a night in every com­mu­ni­ty com­ing up in this week and have it from an ear­ly evening so that peo­ple would still have time to go to fete. In that way, it would en­hance the com­mu­ni­ty. It would al­low the com­mu­ni­ties to build out their re­sources and show off their ca­pac­i­ties and, of course, show­case their mas,” she men­tioned.

Tull high­light­ed that the state al­ready has to play the role of fa­cil­i­ta­tor and in­vestor, and it must give enough thought as to how they can get a re­turn on their own in­vest­ment.

“When you do it like this, you’re al­so cre­at­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties. Busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Car­ni­val en­tre­pre­neurs, es­pe­cial­ly those who are op­er­at­ing as small and medi­um mi­cro en­ter­pris­es. What you are do­ing is al­so gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“When one looks at it from a com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed ap­proach, chances are there is al­ways a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for de­vel­op­ment be­yond the Car­ni­val sea­son.”

Fete prices

On most all-in­clu­sives that have been start­ing from $1,200 this year, Tull said if per­sons are spend­ing their mon­ey for these events they must get val­ue for mon­ey and it must not be lack­lus­tre.

“The ser­vice as soon as you en­ter the all-in­clu­sive must be on point un­til you leave. Events have raised their tick­et prices this year, which peo­ple are buy­ing be­cause it is be­ing sold out, so they must get qual­i­ty.”

Some peo­ple in the past have said that Car­ni­val is dy­ing. In pro­vid­ing her thoughts on this is­sue, Tull said one of the things is that there is a lack of in­dus­try stan­dards and, when peo­ple talk about the dy­ing as­pect, it’s the in­dus­try part that they look at and think of how that is caus­ing the Car­ni­val as an ecosys­tem as a whole to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.  

“The lack of in­dus­try stan­dards is one of the chal­lenges that is press­ing heav­i­ly, un­for­tu­nate­ly, on the ecosys­tem as a whole.”

Tull out­lined that for a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of Car­ni­val, and to de­vel­op plans for its sus­tain­abil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment, con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to Car­ni­val as an ecosys­tem.

“We have to move past just mea­sur­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and be­gin to mea­sure that en­tire ecosys­tem so that we can con­tem­plate not just what we gain from the Car­ni­val when it’s hap­pen­ing, but what we don’t gain be­cause loss­es are equal­ly im­por­tant when we con­tem­plate Car­ni­val’s fu­ture,” she re­marked.

When asked whether the eco­nom­ic im­pact is falling, Tull said no, but this is where da­ta cap­ture is need­ed be­cause if there is go­ing to be a dis­cus­sion about eco­nom­ic im­pact, you need da­ta.

“For me, who has the ex­pe­ri­ence of mea­sur­ing and cap­tur­ing da­ta, I can safe­ly tell you that it isn’t falling. The ho­tels are booked out. You can’t get any­thing.”

The Busi­ness Guardian called sev­er­al car rentals who wished to re­main un­named. They said that their cars have been booked out for the Car­ni­val sea­son since De­cem­ber. The cost of a rental starts at $300.

As it per­tains to flights from North Amer­i­ca, a Caribbean Air­line of­fi­cial said there have been sol­id book­ings from this route, for the car­ni­val sea­son.

Over two weeks ago, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, told Busi­ness Guardian that there is an an­tic­i­pat­ed surge in vis­i­tor ar­rivals, in­creased air­craft fre­quen­cy, ful­ly booked ho­tels, and an ex­pand­ed line­up of events, which promis­es to sur­pass all ex­pec­ta­tions.”

He not­ed Car­ni­val 2024 wel­comed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 41,444 vis­i­tors by air, in­clud­ing 29,651 non-na­tion­als and 11,793 na­tion­als re­sid­ing abroad.

How­ev­er, for Car­ni­val 2025, the Tourism Min­is­ter said pro­jec­tions in­di­cate a sig­nif­i­cant rise in ar­rivals stat­ing, “the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go es­ti­mates that be­tween Feb­ru­ary 1 and March 14, 158,897 vis­i­tors will ar­rive. This growth high­lights the fes­ti­val’s grow­ing ap­peal and in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture for Car­ni­val 2024 was es­ti­mat­ed at US$94.2 mil­lion (TT$640 mil­lion), cov­er­ing food, en­ter­tain­ment, ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­port, and oth­er ex­pens­es