DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to wel­come 66,445 peo­ple via flights in­to the coun­try this month, com­pared to 59,693 for the same pe­ri­od last year. This fig­ure rep­re­sents 6,752 more peo­ple ow­ing to the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The pro­ject­ed da­ta, pro­vid­ed by Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed, al­so notes that flights have in­creased in­to the coun­try since the start of the year.

In Jan­u­ary, 73,588 peo­ple were ex­pect­ed to fly in, com­pared to 59,854 in Jan­u­ary 2023 and 25,305 in 2022.

The fore­cast­ed ar­rivals for 2024 are based on the cal­cu­la­tion of the av­er­age load fac­tor for 2023, by the max­i­mum seat ca­pac­i­ty in­to the coun­try. For the nine weeks be­tween Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, 1,350 flights are ex­pect­ed. For the eight weeks be­tween Jan­u­ary to Feb­ru­ary 2023, the num­ber of flights stood at 784.

How­ev­er, vis­i­tors and mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra have mixed views about whether or not they should come to the coun­try for Car­ni­val, some cit­ing the crime rate.

Nicole Roberts, who vis­its an­nu­al­ly for the sea­son and works in child­care in the Unit­ed States, is ar­riv­ing this week for the en­tire Car­ni­val sea­son. Roberts said for her, de­spite an un­set­tling crime sit­u­a­tion, there is no place like home.

“Car­ni­val is my thing, I love meh coun­try. What I don’t like what is go­ing on is our crime rate in our coun­try and what makes it worse, every­one who lives there build more fear in us. I know it’s bad but we al­ways like to come and have a good time,” she said.

More than the crime rate, Roberts had to weigh the high costs as­so­ci­at­ed with flights and tick­ets for events. She said she has spent US$10,000 (ap­prox $67,722) to take part in Car­ni­val 2024.

“The prices, prices for a tick­et just to go to en­joy our­selves is ridicu­lous. You have to be like in four sou sou just to come. Cos­tume? An­oth­er thing just gone sky-rock­et. Yuh pay­ing more for less,” she said.

Roberts said Gov­ern­ment should work hard to ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion to en­cour­age for­eign trav­ellers. She added that more must be done to make T&T more at­trac­tive to tourists.

“I was in To­ba­go in Oc­to­ber and To­ba­go, to me, now I know it’s Trinidad and To­ba­go but To­ba­go was very clean and I don’t think the crime rate was, I didn’t re­al­ly hear any­thing about To­ba­go crime. I don’t know what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing, who ac­tu­al­ly have to do what, but they need to stand up and bring back Trinidad in­to a tourist place that every­body wants to come, like can’t wait to come.

“We are telling friends and friends is like, ‘oh we’re look­ing up sta­tis­tics about your crime rate and every­thing’ but we’re still ‘that’s our coun­try’, so we will come re­gard­less but some­thing have to be done with that crime,” she said.

But 40-year-old Fi­azz Ma­hamood says he will not be fly­ing home for Car­ni­val ever again.

Ma­hamood is a projects di­rec­tor for an oil com­pa­ny in Kuwait and has been re­sid­ing out of Trinidad for 18 years.

An avid Car­ni­val en­thu­si­ast, Ma­hamood said the crime sit­u­a­tion had caused him to sit this one out.

“The in­crease in crime, I hon­est­ly didn’t feel safe, even the last time I was there in Au­gust. I like to go out at nights and by nine o’clock I was feel­ing so un­safe that, I mean, I left and went back home and nine o’clock was my dead­line to get back home. It’s like a in­se­cure feel­ing, like you’re sit­ting by a bar or in a restau­rant and you’re look­ing at your back all the time to see who’s walk­ing in. I didn’t feel like that be­fore and read­ing the news and all that, every­day is mur­der, so I’m just scared to go out there and go­ing out to par­ty at night and next thing some­thing hap­pens be­ing in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Ma­hamood has been part of a group of 25 Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who of­ten vis­it­ed an­nu­al­ly for Car­ni­val. How­ev­er, out of that fig­ure, he said just around five of them re­turned this year.

Mean­while, Spir­it Mass di­rec­tor Adri­an Scoon said his band has reg­is­tered just un­der 3,000 peo­ple for Car­ni­val with 50 per cent of the rev­ellers be­ing for­eign­ers.

By his ac­count, they were not per­turbed by crime.

“Car­ni­val, tra­di­tion­al­ly, has been safe for our for­eign­ers. There have not been many is­sues as far as I’m con­cerned. So, I be­lieve that there’s a lot of ex­cite­ment from our cus­tomers. They email us all the time and any email em­bed­ded is al­ways some sen­ti­ment about how ex­cit­ed they are about to play mas. We have a lot of first-time mas­quer­aders fly­ing in from all sorts of parts of the world, South Africa, Aus­tralia, Japan. We have a con­tin­gent from Brazil and al­so from the re­gion as well,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to get in­for­ma­tion from air­lines about seat avail­abil­i­ty, cur­rent book­ings and pric­ing but was un­suc­cess­ful. At­tempts to get de­tails about oc­cu­pan­cy from sev­er­al ho­tels were al­so un­suc­cess­ful. De­spite Car­ni­val be­ing less than two weeks away, Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rant and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA) pres­i­dent Has­sel Thom said he had no in­for­ma­tion about oc­cu­pan­cy for the sea­son.