While hote­liers in north Trinidad are re­port­ing a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val sea­son, for To­ba­go this was not the case.

Ma­jor ho­tels and even the small­er es­tab­lish­ments in Port-of-Spain told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian they had be­tween 90 to 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rates, some even be­ing com­plete­ly booked in ad­vance.

How­ev­er, for the sis­ter is­land oc­cu­pan­cy was gen­er­al­ly around 65 per cent. Bed and break­fast fa­cil­i­ties not­ed a mix­ture of re­spons­es with fig­ures as low as 20 per cent in some in­stances.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said while his min­istry is still await­ing of­fi­cial da­ta from the CSO, ear­ly in­di­ca­tions placed the num­ber of vis­i­tor ar­rivals by air at 30,000 peo­ple.

“These are peo­ple not trav­el­ling on T&T pass­ports, and trav­el­ling for the 19-day pe­ri­od up to Car­ni­val Tues­day,” Mitchell ex­plained.

He said the num­ber of vis­i­tor ar­rivals this year was al­ways like­ly to be less com­pared to 2020 and the pre­ced­ing years be­cause few­er flights were com­ing in this year.

“Many per­sons who want­ed to en­joy Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions sim­ply could not get flights,” Mitchell said.

On the feed­back thus far from tourism stake­hold­ers, the Tourism Min­is­ter said this was good.

In par­tic­u­lar, the ex­pe­ri­ence from the Roy­al Caribbean Epic Car­ni­val Cruise has been gen­er­al­ly good, Mitchell said, adding that the pro­mot­er has booked his berth for next year.

“This was a par­tic­u­lar­ly in­no­v­a­tive ini­tia­tive as it mit­i­gat­ed both the air trans­porta­tion is­sues as well as the ac­com­mo­da­tion sup­ply is­sues that we tra­di­tion­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence around Car­ni­val time.

“The Car­ni­val pe­ri­od pro­vid­ed a wel­come boost to those who serve the tourism in­dus­try which is main­ly a labour-in­ten­sive one,” Mitchell added.

With the cap­i­tal be­ing the main hub of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, ho­tels like Hy­att were sold out al­most a year in ad­vance.

Lisa Shandilya, own­er of the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel in St Ann’s, said when Gov­ern­ment gave the as­sur­ance that Car­ni­val 2023 was a go, her ho­tel was flood­ed with calls for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“By Ju­ly 2022 I was sold out. We had one group who had no oth­er choice but to can­cel in De­cem­ber 2022 leav­ing two rooms avail­able. We had 100 per cent for­eign book­ings, with 10 per cent be­ing di­as­po­ra,” Shandilya said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she not­ed that about 60 per cent of her clien­tèle com­prised re­turn guests from the USA and UK who al­so brought their friends to vis­it Trinidad for Car­ni­val.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Shandilya said dur­ing the week of Car­ni­val--from the Wednes­day be­fore to Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day--Chan­cel­lor had many re­quests from for­eign­ers who want­ed to move out from Airbnbs. An­oth­er no­tice­able change, Shandilya added was that her ho­tel moved from 14-night ac­com­mo­da­tion stay to sev­en nights or five nights.

In shar­ing gen­er­al ob­ser­va­tions about the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od Shandilya said St Ann’s was qui­et with not many for­eign­ers walk­ing or milling around at the Sa­van­nah which per­haps mir­rored big­ger is­sues the au­thor­i­ties need to ex­am­ine.

“I had many guests ask about safe­ty pro­to­cols, es­pe­cial­ly fe­male trav­ellers. We did not get any no­tice or in­for­ma­tion from the Trinidad Tourism Ltd or from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion to pro­vide our guests with links to ac­tiv­i­ties,” Shandilya ex­plained.

This, she said showed that there seemed to be a “huge gap” among the stake­hold­ers and the tourism and cul­ture gov­ern­ing agen­cies to share in­for­ma­tion which it turn, can make it a more seam­less ex­pe­ri­ence for guests and for the sec­tor on the whole.

Ac­cord­ing to Shandilya hote­liers, there­fore, were left with no choice but to do their own re­search, and pre­pare links and guid­ance for guests.

“Cul­ture is a ma­jor as­pect of Car­ni­val. Where do I send guests to im­merse them­selves in a Car­ni­val mu­se­um?” Shandilya said not­ing that the, “Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals ‘hype’ was a show­case of noth­ing less than spec­tac­u­lar.”

Go­ing for­ward, she ad­vised more must be done to lift the stan­dard.

“And this is our down­fall with la­belling events and not com­ing up to the de­sired lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards. I must al­so stress there is no in­clu­sion for dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple to en­joy Car­ni­val.

“We have to start build­ing qual­i­ty and stan­dards, and peo­ple must see im­prove­ments year af­ter year, so we ‘the peo­ple’ would be­come part of the process. I heard the Min­is­ter say that they would have stats how­ev­er, sta­tis­ti­cians weren’t vis­i­ble. I thought they would have tak­en this year se­ri­ous­ly to gath­er da­ta to help di­rect and shape the fu­ture of Car­ni­val,” Shandilya said.

Like oth­er es­tab­lish­ments in the cap­i­tal, The Brix al­so re­port­ed a full house.

Own­er John Aboud told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that his busi­ness­es al­so had 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy with most­ly for­eign­ers from North Amer­i­ca who stayed from Car­ni­val Fri­day to Ash Wednes­day.

The Nor­mandie Ho­tel was al­so com­plete­ly sold out with guests from the di­as­po­ra and for­eign­ers.

To­ba­go re­port­ed small­er num­bers

Im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Chris James said while the is­land record­ed a gen­er­al oc­cu­pan­cy of about 65 per cent, these were most­ly do­mes­tic tourists.

On what this said about for­eign ar­rivals this year James said British Air­ways num­bers, how­ev­er, are up, adding that To­ba­go con­tin­ues its mar­ket­ing plans and ex­pects high­er in­ter­na­tion­al fig­ures.

Small­er hote­liers re­port­ed a range of oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els from to­tal­ly booked to av­er­age lev­els and in some cas­es, be­low nor­mal stays.

Kay Trot­man, pres­i­dent of The Unique Bed and Break­fast and Self Cater­ing, who shared num­bers from Car­ni­val Fri­day to Car­ni­val Tues­day ex­plained, “There were some peo­ple who were ful­ly booked but they were small in num­bers. So be­cause we are the un­der five peo­ple when we say we are ful­ly booked we have rang­ing from peo­ple who were ful­ly booked for the pe­ri­od, to those who did not have any­thing at all.”

She added some own­ers had be­tween 30 to 40 per cent of book­ings be­cause guests did not stay for the en­tire Car­ni­val week­end, al­so not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of guests came from Trinidad and did not take part in Car­ni­val but rather came for camp­ing.

“Some es­tab­lish­ments had for­eign vis­i­tors but these are the re­turn vis­i­tors who came not nec­es­sar­i­ly for Car­ni­val but peo­ple who came for the pe­ri­od and they re­turn to the guest­hous­es they are fa­mil­iar with,” Trot­man said.

The ma­jor­i­ty of the Trot­man’s mem­ber­ship con­sists of un­der eight rooms and these had be­tween 40 to 50 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

Those which of­fered eight to 15 rooms re­port­ed about 20 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to Trot­man stays have not re­turned to pre-COVID lev­els.

She at­trib­uted this to the coun­try “get­ting off to a late start” when bor­ders re­opened.

“This coun­try was among the last to open its bor­ders so peo­ple would have al­ready made book­ings or de­ter­mine where their va­ca­tion would be spent pri­or to when our bor­ders were re­opened and nor­mal­ly peo­ple com­ing for Car­ni­val have to plan long in ad­vance,” Trot­man ex­plained.

Not­ing that To­ba­go is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a lim­ing spot for Car­ni­val Trot­man is how­ev­er, hope­ful that the post-sea­son will be much bet­ter.

On whether the au­thor­i­ties were do­ing enough to prop­er­ly mar­ket the is­land she said while they are do­ing their part “with­in rea­son” she sug­gest­ed they come up with nov­el ideas to boost vis­i­tor ar­rivals.

“It is al­most as if we are start­ing from the be­gin­ning. The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd has been rein­tro­duc­ing To­ba­go in­to the trav­el space and some of that would take some time time to pick-up but we should al­ready be look­ing at book­ings for next year,” Trot­man sug­gest­ed.