Weak da­ta cap­ture and ad-hoc event-fo­cused man­age­ment are among two of the main bar­ri­ers pre­vent­ing T&T from prop­er­ly mon­etis­ing its Car­ni­val prod­uct.

This from Dr Kei­th Nurse, pres­i­dent of the Col­lege of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts T&T (COSTATT), who shared his in­sights with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on how this coun­try can prop­er­ly cash in on its most tout­ed fes­ti­val.

Nurse is a for­mer mem­ber of Gov­ern­ment’s Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board and an econ­o­mist, said, “We need to break out of the nar­row event-fo­cused ap­proach where we on­ly or­gan­ise for the time lead­ing up to Car­ni­val. The mar­ket in T&T has peaked. The da­ta in terms of ar­rivals and even vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­tures has plateaued since about 2014,” he said.

Stat­ing that the on­ly da­ta that T&T “re­al­ly cap­tures” is vis­i­tor ar­rivals, he said these fig­ures have been hov­er­ing be­tween 35,000 and 40,000 for more than a decade.

Nurse said while vis­i­tor ar­rivals are key to tal­ly, there needs to be more drilling down on the num­bers, as he said a pub­li­ca­tion called “Car­ni­val Di­gest” which used to be pre­pared by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), was vi­tal in shar­ing crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion.

How­ev­er, that has been dis­con­tin­ued for more than a decade.

“That used to cap­ture the da­ta on not just the ar­rival and ex­pen­di­ture, but where peo­ple came from in de­tail and it would al­so drill down on all of the ex­pen­di­tures. So, the doc­u­ment would in­di­cate not just what peo­ple were spend­ing on things for Car­ni­val, but al­so how much was be­ing spent out­side of things re­lat­ed to Car­ni­val.

“So, for ex­am­ple, ex­pen­di­tures on at­trac­tions, go­ing to vis­it the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary or go­ing to Asa Wright. Some of that has been cap­tured in the tourism da­ta so, fes­ti­val tourism im­pact is still some­thing that we’re cap­tur­ing,” Nurse said.

A res­i­dent of Glas­gow, Scot­land, for about four years, Nurse said he would go to the Ed­in­burgh fes­ti­val every year wit­ness­ing the im­por­tance of da­ta cap­ture and its im­pact.

“They have about 10 fes­ti­vals, nine of them hap­pen all at the same time in the sum­mer, and one hap­pens around Christ­mas time and they doc­u­ment the eco­nom­ic im­pact for each. We’ve been run­ning longer than Ed­in­burgh fes­ti­val...And still to this day, we do not gen­er­ate an eco­nom­ic re­port iden­ti­fy­ing the eco­nom­ic im­pact.

“This is the great­est tragedy of all tragedies. It’s a sad com­men­tary on our ca­pac­i­ty as a coun­try not to doc­u­ment and map the thing that we are so suc­cess­ful at,” Nurse said.

Not­ing that sev­er­al “car­ni­vals” take place at the same time all over T&T, apart from the main Car­ni­val event in the cap­i­tal, Nurse ad­vised that in­for­ma­tion on the small­er car­ni­vals can al­so as­sist in track­ing the progress of emerg­ing ideas.

“So, if you don’t want to be in Port-of-Spain, there is an­oth­er car­ni­val some­where close by that you can par­tic­i­pate in. And what that has done is ac­tu­al­ly keep some of the more tra­di­tion­al mas­quer­ade el­e­ments, like cos­tum­ing, alive in some of those car­ni­vals.

“So, it’s like a means of cul­tur­al preser­va­tion as well as a means for in­cu­bat­ing some of the new ideas that are com­ing in­to T&T Car­ni­val. That’s one of the things that the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion has done well, which it needs to con­tin­ue to fa­cil­i­tate,” he said.

How­ev­er, Nurse point­ed out that what is not be­ing cap­tured now is da­ta on the an­cil­lary in­dus­tries.

“For ex­am­ple, how is Car­ni­val im­pact­ing the bev­er­age mar­ket?...How is it im­pact­ing on the me­dia, ra­dio sta­tions? So, the av­er­age cost of an ad goes up sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

“What is the im­pact on car rentals. And then there are ar­eas re­lat­ed to what we call the cre­ative in­dus­tries it­self. Has the cost of cos­tumes gone up, or is it go­ing down? What is the do­mes­tic ex­pen­di­ture on some of these things? We gen­er­al­ly don’t know. We have the for­eign ex­change im­pact from vis­i­tors, but the do­mes­tic ex­pen­di­ture we haven’t done an ac­tu­al study of that for a long time, if at all, re­al­ly,” Nurse said.

An­oth­er area that needs to be ex­am­ined is in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty brand­ing, which is a big in­come gen­er­a­tor.

“And that’s what we’re not max­imis­ing on. So for ex­am­ple, if you go around the sa­van­nah you will see those big bill­boards. For ex­am­ple, John­nie Walk­er has peo­ple on stilts and wear­ing Pier­rot Grenade cos­tumes or what­ev­er else. Those are re­al­ly im­por­tant brand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties from a for­eign al­co­hol pro­duc­er.

“Across from Movi­etowne, Ab­solute has a big pan in the mid­dle of that grassy area. That’s an­oth­er ex­am­ple but as a coun­try, we haven’t been ex­ploit­ing strate­gi­cal­ly this el­e­ment of what I call des­ti­na­tion brand­ing and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty brand­ing. Ma­jor cities all around the world are do­ing this in a big way,” Nurse ex­plained.

In fact, he said “in the lit­er­a­ture,” in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty brand­ing is re­ferred as “fes­ti­val­i­sa­tion,” where fes­ti­vals are used as a mech­a­nism to gen­er­ate wealth, jobs, for­eign ex­change in mul­ti­ple sec­tors.

“And that’s the beau­ty of the cre­ative sec­tor. The cre­ative sec­tor cre­ates many op­por­tu­ni­ties for what we call spin-off eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

“It has strong mul­ti­pli­er ef­fects, more than you would find in any oth­er sec­tor. Not in agri­cul­ture, not in bank­ing and fi­nance, not in oil and gas, and so on,” Nurse added.

Even af­ter Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day comes to an end that does not mean da­ta track­ing should be stopped, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to the cre­ative in­dus­tries ex­ports.

He ques­tioned how many mas­quer­ade bands are ex­port­ing their ser­vices out­side of T&T af­ter Car­ni­val, whether it is their de­sign ser­vices or if they sell­ing cos­tumes abroad.

An­oth­er un­known the econ­o­mist out­lined is the ex­tent to which so­ca artistes are per­form­ing abroad and how much are they earn.

“How many steel­bands are per­form­ing out­side of Trinidad? What is the size of their bands? Where are they go­ing? How much are we earn­ing in in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty earn­ings? On copy­right some of that da­ta you could get from COTT (Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T) but that’s on­ly for mu­sic. This is mul­ti­fac­eted,” Nurse ex­plained, em­pha­sis­ing there is a whole range of op­por­tu­ni­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with T&T Car­ni­val.

Even in the bev­er­age sec­tor da­ta can be tracked for the spin-off Car­ni­val events, he said.

“Is Carib sell­ing more beer in New York or in Wash­ing­ton, DC or Mi­a­mi where there are big car­ni­vals. How are we tap­ping in­to that? I know some of the big bands, mas­quer­ade bands, have band launch­es in these cities as well and they earn in­come there.

“On that side of the equa­tion, we have not been cap­tur­ing the da­ta. It’s very dif­fi­cult to cap­ture be­cause of­ten peo­ple don’t want to tell you what they’re do­ing and how much they’re earn­ing in their ex­ter­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. But if we are se­ri­ous about build­ing an in­dus­try, then we need to know how our in­ge­nu­ity and cre­ativ­i­ty is be­ing de­ployed and be­ing mon­e­tised. And the key to all of this is to cap­ture the da­ta,” he main­tained.