“Whether you see it and nev­er take stock, but Car­ni­val is in your mind on­ly about woman and wuk, you so caught up with en­joy­ment that you don’t see the lev­el of em­ploy­ment Car­ni­val is a sea that deep and you don’t know noth­ing about them be­cause you fol­low old talk like sheep.”

I be­gin with this verse from Bun­ji Gar­lin’s “Heart of the peo­ple” in which he de­tails the ex­tent of Car­ni­val’s reach and how much this in­dus­try, that few tru­ly un­der­stand, is not just about song and dance, but has deep eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­por­tance to the coun­try.

To­day would have been Car­ni­val Thurs­day and any­one who knows me would be cer­tain that I would have this morn­ing head­ed to a break­fast par­ty and this af­ter­noon in­to the night head­ed to Farm­house, like­ly end­ing the night/morn­ing in­to Tribe Ig­nite.

It is usu­al­ly crunch time for peo­ple who en­joy the fes­ti­val, the fi­nal week, lead­ing up to the big pa­rade of Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

The de­ci­sion by the gov­ern­ment to can­cel Car­ni­val was tak­en for good rea­son. Had such a de­ci­sion not been made, there would sure­ly be death and de­struc­tion be­cause as a peo­ple Car­ni­val is about close in­ter­ac­tion. A po­ten­tial launch­pad for the coro­n­avirus.

As we ex­plore in oth­er parts of this week’s Busi­ness Guardian, the lack of Car­ni­val will mean a loss of bil­lions of dol­lars for the econ­o­my and sig­nif­i­cant for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

Too of­ten there are peo­ple who see gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in Car­ni­val as a waste of pub­lic funds but as we learn from econ­o­mists Dr Kei­th Nurse and Dr Vanus James this is far from the truth and the re­al­i­ty is gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment is mere pit­tance com­pared to what the coun­try gets in re­turn.

The can­cel­la­tion al­so al­lows us to have a se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about Car­ni­val, the arts and cul­ture and how they can be in­te­grat­ed in such away that they lead to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and an in­te­gra­tion and en­hance­ment of out tourism prod­uct.

Whether by de­sign or pure ac­ci­dent, the de­ci­sion of the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to merge tourism and cul­ture could prove to be an in­spired one. His ap­point­ment of Ran­dall Mitchell to the post some months ago was a step in the right di­rec­tion and as long as Mitchell puts his mind and ef­fort to the job and he gets re­al, not tac­it sup­port, from the Prime Min­is­ter, just maybe we could fi­nal­ly get this thing right as a coun­try. It is not be­yond Mitchell but he will sure­ly fail with­out strong sup­port from the Cab­i­net.

When I think of a com­plete tourism plan in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean I al­ways think of Ja­maica. It is the is­land with per­haps the most of­fer­ings. Like the three Bs—Bar­ba­dos, Ba­hamas and Bermu­da—it too has beau­ti­ful beach­es, it has lux­u­ry and bud­get ac­com­mo­da­tion, high qual­i­ty ser­vice, lots of things to see and do, but most of all it has a strong cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty that un­der­pins all of its of­fer­ings.

“Irie” the slang of Ja­maicans is known world over, as is its reg­gae mu­sic, its jerk and yes soon, its Car­ni­val.

Ja­maicans like many oth­er Caribbean is­lands are ex­perts at mar­ket­ing their des­ti­na­tion but it is clear that its prod­uct is not just sand and sea and nat­ur­al beau­ty but it’s about ad­ven­ture, cul­ture, about sport, food and mu­sic. It’s about fes­ti­vals and about be­ing proud­ly Ja­maican.

T&T must see its tourism fu­ture in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to our unique cul­ture and oth­er of­fer­ings.

We must ac­cept that our tourism can­not com­pete with, say, Bar­ba­dos based on the beau­ty of our beach­es, no mat­ter how we de­lude our­selves about To­ba­go. But what To­ba­go and Trinidad have are of­fer­ings that if de­vel­oped can tru­ly ri­val the best.

We may have good beach­es as op­posed to great ones, but To­ba­go in par­tic­u­lar has some of the best div­ing any­where in the Caribbean. T&T’s di­ver­si­ty is its strength in terms of its tourism po­ten­tial and there­fore its cul­ture, its fes­ti­vals out­side of car­ni­val, its artistes, so­ca, chut­ney, zess not to men­tion its culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence, promis­es so much as a des­ti­na­tion. Its great­est chal­lenge is lead­er­ship and a com­mit­ment to di­ver­si­fy our in­come streams.

We have to un­der­stand our tourism prod­uct and what is pos­si­ble. It is true that the North­ern Caribbean is­lands have a re­al ad­van­tage of prox­im­i­ty to the ma­jor North Amer­i­can source mar­kets.

You can­not, for ex­am­ple, de­cide on a week­end cruise from Flori­da to the South­ern Caribbean.

Al­so long-haul and mid-range flights tend to be more ex­pen­sive than the short flights to Hamil­ton, Mobay or Nas­sau. So our prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion must be cen­tred around the ex­pe­ri­ence the vis­i­tor can have. This is al­so in keep­ing with the mod­ern vis­i­tor who pri­or to COVID-19 want­ed a des­ti­na­tion that he or she can ex­pe­ri­ence and see up-close the re­al way of life and not just lie on the beach and drink rum punch.

As Bun­ji says, T&T must see that Car­ni­val is a sea that is deep. It is the low­est hang­ing fruit to build­ing out a fes­ti­vals prod­uct that is sec­ond to none. It will not be easy but it is doable.

Al­ready we have seen that our artistes are pre­pared to in­no­vate again. Car­ni­val is in many ways a tes­ta­ment to our in­no­va­tion but it is al­so an ex­am­ple of our strength in lo­gis­tics, event plan­ning, in ef­fi­cien­cy.

No Car­ni­val must not mean no work, it should mean plan­ning to make the great­est street par­ty, tru­ly the great­est show on earth.