PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

An es­ti­mat­ed $6oo mil­lion was spent by vis­i­tors dur­ing Car­ni­val 2024, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts.

In a me­dia re­lease from the min­istry yes­ter­day, it was not­ed that ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the CSO’s 2023 ex­it sur­vey, vis­i­tor spend for the 2024 Car­ni­val pe­ri­od is es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$93.3 mil­lion or $634 mil­lion (TT).

The re­lease stat­ed: “With re­spect to ex­pen­di­ture, util­is­ing, fig­ures from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) da­ta from last year’s ex­it sur­veys, vis­i­tors stayed on av­er­age 13 days, and spent on av­er­age US$2,251 or TT$15,313 on food, en­ter­tain­ment, ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­port etc.” The re­lease, how­ev­er, stressed that CSO sur­vey da­ta on vis­i­tors’ stay and ex­pen­di­ture for 2024 is not yet avail­able.

The re­lease added: “Da­ta on over­all spend on Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from pri­vate fetes and par­ties held through­out the pe­ri­od are un­avail­able at this time and will take a sig­nif­i­cant study to de­ter­mine the over­all eco­nom­ic im­pact of the Car­ni­val fes­ti­val.

“Most of the Car­ni­val events were sold out in ad­vance and well pa­tro­n­ised over­all. Based on the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect, the in­jec­tion of TT$640 mil­lion in­to the econ­o­my ex­pect­ed­ly cre­at­ed a rip­ple ef­fect that stim­u­lat­ed eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in many oth­er sec­tors.”

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics cur­rent­ly avail­able which were pre­sent­ed in the re­lease, sev­er­al ma­jor Car­ni­val events host­ed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion saw a ma­jor in­crease in at­ten­dance.

In­crease in at­ten­dance at Di­manche Gras, Car­ni­val Vil­lage this year

Most no­tably, the Di­manche Gras show which saw so­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano win his very first Ca­lyp­so Monarch with Soul of Ca­lyp­so saw at­ten­dance shoot up to 2,578, an in­crease of 1,202 peo­ple over the 1,376 peo­ple who at­tend­ed in 2023.

The Ju­nior Pa­rade of Bands and the Can­boulay ri­ots al­so saw sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­dance in­creas­es of 775 and 500 re­spec­tive­ly. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage al­so saw a size­able in­crease in vis­i­tors as the re­lease not­ed 100,000 peo­ple vis­it­ed the vil­lage, 30,000 more than the 70,000 vis­i­tors to the vil­lage last year.

How­ev­er, ca­lyp­so stake­hold­ers were re­luc­tant to say Mon­tano was the sole cat­a­lyst for the surge in at­ten­dance at the Di­manche Gras show.

Omari Ash­by, who pro­vid­ed com­men­tary for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch, ac­knowl­edged that Mon­tano’s in­volve­ment in the com­pe­ti­tion could have in­creased the buzz for the show, but al­so not­ed that the pub­lic was large­ly more com­fort­able at­tend­ing live events this year com­pared to 2023.

Ash­by said a clear­er in­di­ca­tor could be found if 2024’s sta­tis­tics could be com­pared to num­bers wit­nessed be­fore 2020.

No­tably, while Mon­tano com­pet­ed in the Ca­lyp­so Monarch this year, he per­formed as a guest artiste at the Di­manche Gras show in both 2023 and 2020.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Ains­ley King for com­ment on the in­crease in at­ten­dance num­bers for the event, but the call was dis­con­nect­ed and he did not an­swer the oth­er call to his cell­phone.

Pro­duc­er and artis­tic di­rec­tor for the Di­manche Gras show Davlin Thomas al­so did not re­spond to calls and ques­tions sent to him by Guardian Me­dia con­cern­ing the at­ten­dance rise.