Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Car­ni­val sea­son may be over but the in­flux of tourists to the is­land is still very much on­go­ing as Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL), the agency re­spon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing the is­land as a tourist at­trac­tion, says the 2023 to 2024 sea­son has been the best sea­son af­ter the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from TTL yes­ter­day, “The 2023-2024 cruise sea­son has been suc­cess­ful thus far, with a to­tal of 25 ves­sels call­ing bring­ing in 57,424 pas­sen­gers and 21,097 crew mem­bers. Near­ly 40,000 pas­sen­gers have dis­em­barked and ex­plored our beau­ti­ful is­land, with an av­er­age spend of US$43 per per­son, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to our lo­cal econ­o­my.”

The rare but wel­comed ar­rival of two cruise ships, the Jew­el of the Seas and the Sev­en Seas Splen­dor brought more than 3,000 tourists to the is­land yes­ter­day alone.

Al­most 3,000 are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive as the Emer­ald Princess cruise ship is ex­pect­ed to dock in the cap­i­tal city to­day.

Tourism Trinidad said the Jew­el of the Seas pro­vid­ed or­gan­ised tours for 667 of its pas­sen­gers us­ing 41 maxi taxis.

The Sev­en Seas Splen­dor al­so of­fered pre-pack­aged tours for 589 of its pas­sen­gers us­ing 39 maxi taxis.

Some 1,131 pas­sen­gers on the Emer­ald Princess have booked to go on tours us­ing 69 maxi taxis to­day.

And while tourists from Puer­to Ri­co, Eng­land and the Unit­ed States told Guardian Me­dia they loved every­thing about the is­land in­clud­ing so­ca mu­sic and roti, the tourism agency, ven­dors and trans­port ser­vices are the ones ben­e­fit­ting the most.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Cruise Ship Com­plex yes­ter­day, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Car­val­ho’s Agen­cies, Charles Car­val­ho said it’s been the best cruise ship sea­son in al­most 15 years.

He said the most pop­u­lar pack­aged tours in­clude vis­its to Mara­cas Beach, Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary and in and around the cap­i­tal city.

Ac­cord­ing to him, tours can range any­where be­tween US$50 to US$100.

Ven­dors lo­cat­ed at the ship­ping com­plex al­so said sales have been great.

One cloth­ing de­sign­er and own­er of An­gel Glo de­signs, An­gel Grif­fith said, “It is go­ing very well, ex­cel­lent. I can­not com­plain. They are shop­ping. Tonight (last night) is Caribbean night on the ship so they are buy­ing all the dress­es that have birds and trop­i­cal de­signs.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Car­val­ho said, “We’ve had bet­ter sea­sons than this be­fore and that would have been about 15 years ago. So this year was like a sur­prise to us based on pre­vi­ous years and just we wish that it would con­tin­ue. This is a good year for us. What is nice about this year is that the pas­sen­gers are very ac­tive so they want to ex­plore.”