PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell yes­ter­day de­fend­ed Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL), fol­low­ing crit­i­cism from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of the air­line’s treat­ment of To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

The THA head said on Wednes­day that the late ad­di­tion of flights ahead of the event un­der­mined Trinida­di­ans trav­el­ling to To­ba­go for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

But Mitchell ques­tioned the lim­it­ed pro­mo­tion of the event by the THA.

“I be­lieve that To­ba­go may have tak­en a lit­tle longer than ex­pect­ed to plan and to do the es­ti­ma­tions with re­spect to how many seats would have been need­ed, etc. But all cred­it to Caribbean Air­lines, look­ing at the de­mand and putting on the ad­di­tion­al seats. I think they were a bit de­layed, To­ba­go, in ad­ver­tis­ing and pro­mot­ing the car­ni­val be­cause I on­ly think from the be­gin­ning of Oc­to­ber or maybe the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber they re­al­ly be­gan to pro­mote the car­ni­val,” said Mitchell fol­low­ing a tour of mod­el rooms at the Radis­son Blu ho­tel site on Wright­son Road in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Ear­li­er this month, the To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion had raised sim­i­lar con­cerns about the late and lim­it­ed pro­mo­tion the event re­ceived. How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion had al­so hoped that CAL would have an­nounced in­creased flight avail­abil­i­ty soon­er to aid in their reg­is­tra­tion push.

The Min­is­ter said de­spite the late pro­mo­tion of the event, the air­line added sig­nif­i­cant flights and feed­back so far sug­gests that both flights and ho­tel rooms are swift­ly be­ing tak­en up.

On Wednes­day, the air­line con­firmed it had added 42 ad­di­tion­al ser­vices which pro­vid­ed an ad­di­tion­al 4,144 seats for peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in at­tend­ing the event.

“I think they took maybe a lit­tle too long to pro­mote and there­fore things may have been rushed. A lit­tle bet­ter plan­ning in the fu­ture and (co­or­di­na­tion with) CAL and there will be no is­sue with trans­porta­tion. But I re­al­ly ap­plaud CAL. CAL has al­ways sup­port­ed our car­ni­val. They’ve al­ways sup­port­ed our events, tourism and all the events we have here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. So I think (the THA) is just learn­ing lessons for the fu­ture,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell was pleased by the progress be­ing made at the Radis­son Blu as he stressed that the coun­try was in great need of ad­di­tion­al room stock.

The Radis­son Blu is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in the next 12 months. The project is ex­pect­ed to cost be­tween $175 mil­lion to $200 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Group CEO of the Radis­son T&T Ashram Ram­nar­ine. The group is al­so spend­ing $40 mil­lion to ren­o­vate the Radis­son, which is next to Radis­son Blu.