Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Crime and the high costs as­so­ci­at­ed with Car­ni­val are heav­i­ly im­pact­ing large bands this sea­son.

Tribe ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the band had seen at least a ten per cent de­crease in reg­is­tered mas­quer­aders for Car­ni­val 2024.

At its Ros­ali­no Street, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters, Tribe’s brand man­ag­er Rhi­an­non Pem­ber­ton sought to iden­ti­fy rea­sons for the de­cline, which she said was most­ly with their for­eign mar­ket.

“The feed­back we are get­ting from them (for­eign­ers) is that the air­fare is ex­pen­sive, which is their first hur­dle in de­cid­ing to come, as well as dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing af­ford­able ac­com­mo­da­tions and then the crime is a bit of a turn-off as well,” Pem­ber­ton said.

“They are read­ing head­lines, it’s scary for them and they’re cau­tious about com­ing.”

On Tribe’s web­site, how­ev­er, their cos­tumes are re­port­ed to be com­plete­ly sold out. How­ev­er, Pem­ber­ton ex­plained why that is so even with low­er reg­is­tra­tion num­bers.

“Once we start reg­is­tra­tion, we see how the trends are go­ing and we fore­cast what num­ber we think we’ll get to and we pre­pare based on that,” Pem­ber­ton said.

To as­suage the fears of those who did reg­is­ter, the brand man­ag­er said Tribe has had to pay for ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty.

“We’ve added ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty to all of the bands, as well as our road team is cur­rent­ly re­vis­ing the routes be­cause the safe­ty of our mas­quer­aders is our num­ber one pri­or­i­ty, it might cost a cou­ple tens of thou­sands of dol­lars more,” she said.

Tribe sells its cos­tume pack­ages for be­tween $5,000 to $6,000.

At the North­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) yes­ter­day, mas band Yu­ma’s co-di­rec­tor, Tanya Gomes, al­so lament­ed the im­pact of crime on their cus­tomers.

“I will def­i­nite­ly say that is af­fect­ing sales, or rather af­fect­ing peo­ple re­con­sid­er­ing to come Car­ni­val be­cause some of the emails we’ve been get­ting re­cent­ly, peo­ple are ask­ing if it is safe to come. There were one or two mas­quer­aders who said they were Tri­ni, they live away but ‘if I come back I will be in hotspot area’, so they asked if they could get a re­fund or as­sis­tance to re­sell the cos­tumes,” Gomes said, even as the band was prepar­ing for cos­tume dis­tri­b­u­tion on Sun­day.

Yu­ma is re­port­ing reg­is­tra­tion num­bers of 4,500—500 less than in 2023. The band said pre-COVID num­bers were usu­al­ly around 3,500 par­tic­i­pants. The cost of cos­tumes range from $3,500 to $10,000.

Apart from crime, Gomes sought to un­der­score that peo­ple are be­ing priced out of the full Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Our Car­ni­val is cer­tain­ly very ex­pen­sive, when it comes to ac­com­mo­da­tion, flights and trans­porta­tion. There was a meet­ing re­cent­ly where we dis­cussed be­ing part of stake­hold­er con­ver­sa­tions go­ing for­ward for Car­ni­val, be­cause a lot hap­pens with­out the band’s in­put. They’ve deemed us as tourism ven­dors be­cause we are host­ing peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try.

“So, if those con­ver­sa­tions could now have the oth­er stake­hold­ers, which are air, trans­port, ac­com­mo­da­tions, and see if we can come to some sort of medi­um to make Car­ni­val af­ford­able go­ing for­ward it is some­thing we are very open to. But at present, this is what we are dealt with, so we have to roll with what we have,” Pem­ber­ton not­ed.

But Ron­nie McIn­tosh, leader of the Ron­nie and Caro mas band, does not be­lieve cer­tain stake­hold­ers, such as Caribbean Air­lines, are in­ter­est­ed in speak­ing with band lead­ers. How­ev­er, he too be­lieves some­thing must be done about the over­all cost for vis­i­tors.

“Some of those who are com­ing last minute, they have a high price to pay. In the ear­lies, I think it was over US$2,000 for a tick­et, I think we are out­pric­ing our­selves; I think we are mak­ing our Car­ni­val the most ex­pen­sive one to at­tend so we need to be care­ful about that,” McIn­tosh said.

He added, “Every­one tar­gets the band lead­ers on cost but when Caribbean Air­lines and Amer­i­can Air­lines set their bar, no­body could get in­volved and change that. The air­lines will not have dis­cus­sions with band­lead­ers, the min­is­ters will have to deal with that but I’m just say­ing com­ing—just to get here—over US$2,000 is just crazy.”

McIn­tosh told Guardian Me­dia he ex­pects around 1,500 mas­quer­aders, which rep­re­sents an uptick in reg­is­tra­tion. He at­trib­uted the in­crease to more pur­chas­ing pow­er from peo­ple who have re­joined the work­force post-pan­dem­ic. His cos­tume prices are be­tween $3,200 and $8,000.

With re­spect to the re­turn­ing threat of COVID-19, the bands have all pledged to con­sis­tent­ly sani­tise high traf­fic fa­cil­i­ties.

But The Lost Tribe’s cre­ative di­rec­tor Valmi­ki Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia there has been at least one pos­i­tive in­flu­ence for Car­ni­val due to the pan­dem­ic.

Ma­haraj said a new guard has emerged post-pan­dem­ic and those peo­ple are bring­ing with them new ideas and fresh con­cepts to bat­tle the old per­sis­tent crit­i­cism that Car­ni­val cos­tumes and art look the same way every year.