To­ba­go’s first-ever Car­ni­val is be­ing hailed as an eco­nom­ic suc­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tourism sec­tor as ho­tels were main­ly filled to ca­pac­i­ty, restau­rants and street food ven­dors did brisk sales and even those sell­ing clothes and oth­er items in sup­port of the sec­tor made mon­ey.

The Busi­ness Guardian was told that those in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor was al­so booked out as thou­sands of na­tion­als and some from the di­as­po­ra con­verged last week­end on the sis­ter isle for the rev­el­ry.

The ho­tel sec­tor was among the hap­pi­est fol­low­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties, as the vast ma­jor­i­ty of ho­tels and guest hous­es on the is­land en­joyed full oc­cu­pan­cy.

“I want to give the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly an 8 out of 10 for the host­ing of the Car­ni­val. It was a safe Car­ni­val and peo­ple en­joyed them­selves, no ma­jor in­ci­dents and that is a plus, plus, plus es­pe­cial­ly when you’re talk­ing about tourism or tourism is­land,” said Car­ol Ann Birch­wood-James, vice pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion.

She added, “At our ho­tels on Thurs­day evening, our oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els were 85 per cent and climb­ing all the small ho­tels were ful­ly booked. The re­main­ing 15 per cent, were va­can­cies in the larg­er ho­tels, but those were filled rapid­ly. So I would say that we have a very good oc­cu­pan­cy. We’re able to make some mon­ey to pay our bills.”

She said that based on the con­ver­sa­tions held with oth­er stake­hold­ers, the eco­nom­ic im­pact was large­ly pos­i­tive.

“Our ven­dors, our restau­rants, when I talked to a lot of peo­ple, restau­ra­teurs, peo­ple who sell veg­eta­bles, all those peo­ple who are in the tourism in­dus­try, even peo­ple who sold clothes. I spoke to a few of them. They said they had pret­ty good sales. So I will say from an eco­nom­ic point of view, it was a suc­cess,” said Birch­wood-James.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted there were some is­sues that need­ed iron­ing out, which would need to be ad­dressed ahead of next year’s stag­ing of the event.

Birch­wood-James con­firmed there were some com­plaints from hote­liers about staff short­ages dur­ing the fes­ti­val days.

“I did hear that we have some ar­eas where staff did not turn out to work, but when we meet with our hote­liers we will get a bet­ter pic­ture of what had oc­curred and how to solve that sit­u­a­tion in the fu­ture,” she said.

The Busi­ness Guardian at­tempt­ed to reach Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris for a com­ment but did not re­ceive a re­sponse up to pub­li­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials from the di­vi­sion backed up Birch­wood James’ state­ment as they con­firmed that ini­tial re­ports showed ho­tels stood at 85 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy at the start of the week­end. How­ev­er, the di­vi­sion said a prop­er analy­sis is be­ing done to get a true re­flec­tion of the im­pact of the Car­ni­val.

While the hote­liers were hap­py, Di­anne Hadad, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, was a bit more mea­sured in her eval­u­a­tion.

She said while there had been some eco­nom­ic boost to some sec­tors, it was still large­ly un­known if the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of To­ba­go reaped the ben­e­fits of the Car­ni­val

“Based on the feed­back I would have heard, there were some fi­nan­cial eco­nom­ic gains for the per­sons who have ac­com­mo­da­tion they would have had book­ings for the pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, a num­ber of the events did not pull off as ex­pect­ed. So there were some loss­es I guess for the pro­mot­ers,” she said as she point­ed out some events were can­celled due to lim­it­ed spon­sor­ship or con­cerns about weath­er con­di­tions.

Hadad, how­ev­er, not­ed, for the most part, the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trav­el on the air and seabridge, which en­sured there were con­sumers on the is­land for the event, went well.

“The move­ment by plane and boat seemed to be sort of smooth al­though there were peo­ple in the air­port from 4 o’clock. But of course, they did not have a reser­va­tion and CAL would have ac­com­mo­dat­ed them by putting on flights lat­er on the day,” she said, “But I guess as we go and grow, things will be in place to make the ride even more suc­cess­ful, but I can’t say that it was a bill pay­er or a coin mak­er.”

Hadad said it was clear that fol­low­ing this ini­tial host­ing, there would be a need for dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the event.

“Clear­ly there are as­pects that will need to be looked at. Whether the tim­ing is right, whether we are hav­ing it dur­ing the right weath­er con­di­tions. But I can’t say nei­ther was it a fail­ure or a mas­sive suc­cess,” said Hadad, who in par­tic­u­lar won­dered about the plan­ning giv­en the pre­vail­ing weath­er con­di­tions ex­pe­ri­enced and oth­er­wise ex­pect­ed dur­ing the month of Oc­to­ber.

“Some­times you need to look at what we are do­ing,” said Hadad when asked about the con­cerns raised fol­low­ing the host­ing of the Bur­na Boy con­cert in the mid­dle of a thun­der­storm. She not­ed that while that event had got much of the head­lines, it was not the on­ly event which was se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the weath­er.

“Every­body’s plac­ing em­pha­sis on that which I re­al­ly don’t know why, Bur­na was not the on­ly game play­ing in town. And the ques­tion would be the weath­er con­di­tions, gen­er­al­ly, be­cause a lot of oth­er events (were af­fect­ed). Na­dia Bat­son would have made com­ments mak­ing apolo­gies to her fans, the en­vi­ron­ment that was cho­sen is one that is al­ready in the man­grove, Gold­en Grove es­tate la­goon-type lands, so is it that we can ac­com­mo­date that type of thing?

“How can we relook at it? Is it that the Shaw Park cul­tur­al com­plex needs to be re­pur­posed for some things I mean, I re­mem­ber peo­ple call­ing for help for al­co­hol li­cens­es,” she said, not­ing that Voice al­so was forced to move his event due to weath­er con­cerns which lead to ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ca­tion con­cern­ing the spe­cial li­cense re­quired to sell al­co­hol at the event.

Hadad al­so not­ed that sev­er­al boat rides were can­celled as well, with the Har­bour Mas­ter an­nounc­ing it could not make it to To­ba­go at all.

“The boat rides, a num­ber of them are can­celled. So, the list of events was 80. Eighty events in one week on the is­land. Wasn’t that overkill?” asked Hadad, who again won­dered if the plans were prop­er­ly made in re­la­tion to To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion and po­ten­tial ac­com­mo­da­tion avail­abil­i­ty.

She al­so ques­tioned just how many of these events meant di­rect rev­enue for To­ba­go as she not­ed a large num­ber of events were host­ed by Trinida­di­an pro­mot­ers.

“Again, it’s left to our trans­port sys­tem if it is flu­id flow­ing, con­sis­tent and re­li­able that will make the dif­fer­ence be­cause at events I don’t know how many par­ties one man will go to in the night for the week. The peo­ple re­sid­ing on the is­land so we have to look at what’s best will work. Could we take 80 par­ties?” said Hadad, who how­ev­er not­ed that events like J’Ou­vert and the Pa­rade of Bands seemed to be well ex­e­cut­ed and at­tend­ed.

Ahead of To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, both Caribbean Air­lines and the In­ter-Is­land Fer­ry Ser­vice an­nounced ad­di­tion­al trips on the route be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go for the fes­ti­val pe­ri­od. The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to both about the lev­el of de­mand for the pe­ri­od.

Caribbean Air­lines stat­ed it would re­lease a state­ment when it re­ceived its of­fi­cial num­bers while there was no re­sponse up to pub­li­ca­tion from the T&T In­ter-Is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny.