Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris has hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­pand­ing To­ba­go’s Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val to four days. She de­scribed this year’s event as a re­sound­ing suc­cess with pos­i­tive feed­back from stake­hold­ers and mas­quer­aders.

Al­though of­fi­cial da­ta is not yet avail­able, Bur­ris an­nounced in a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day that plan­ning for the 2025 Car­ni­val has al­ready start­ed. She said the THA is prepar­ing to launch a year-long mar­ket­ing cam­paign and will be col­lab­o­rat­ing with Caribbean Air­lines to en­hance trav­el op­tions.

Bur­ris com­mend­ed the air­lines for its ef­forts this sea­son de­spite op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, and al­so praised the Port Au­thor­i­ty for ef­fec­tive­ly man­ag­ing the in­flux of trav­ellers, as 24,888 peo­ple ar­rived by sea and the air­bridge for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

A to­tal of 37,500 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

Bur­ris said the THA is look­ing in­to ad­ver­tis­ing in oth­er coun­tries to boost in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­dance.

Dex­ter Sandy, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion, a four-day Car­ni­val will be an ex­cel­lent move once the nec­es­sary con­sul­ta­tions are done.

“We just need to en­sure that the spe­cial in­ter­est groups are a part of the con­ver­sa­tion just so we could have some in­put as to how the ex­pan­sion would work. It sounds good it’s some­thing we need to sit down and work out to en­sure we make the best use of the days,” he said.

Sandy said To­ba­go and all its stake­hold­ers did an ex­cel­lent job.

“So far, all the stake­hold­ers ex­pressed the same thing. Many bands have seen an in­crease in par­tic­i­pa­tion from last year. Based on what we saw in terms of the ar­rivals on the sea and air­bridge the Car­ni­val had a high­er par­tic­i­pa­tion. The fes­ti­val is head­ing in the right di­rec­tion for 2025,” he said.