Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Busi­ness own­ers are count­ing their prof­its in To­ba­go af­ter a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val sea­son.

Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the To­ba­go arm of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said stake­hold­ers are all pleased, as he not­ed the three-day fes­ti­val re­mains an im­por­tant eco­nom­ic dri­ver.

The fifth an­nu­al fes­ti­val was of­fi­cial­ly cel­e­brat­ed from Oc­to­ber 30 to No­vem­ber 1, with next year’s event be­ing ex­pand­ed to four days.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams said the feed­back from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers has been ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive as they dis­sect the im­pact of the event.

He said the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and po­lice must be com­mend­ed.

“Every­body was quite com­fort­able and hap­py for the sea­son. They said it was one of the bet­ter sea­sons since To­ba­go host­ing the Car­ni­val—that was from the busi­ness sec­tor,” he said.

He said the food and bev­er­age in­dus­try re­port­ed favourable num­bers, with hos­pi­tal­i­ty, bed and break­fast and vil­las re­port­ing over 80 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

Asked to quan­ti­fy the eco­nom­ic im­pact of the Car­ni­val, Williams es­ti­mat­ed over $20 mil­lion in vis­i­tor-spend in the food and bev­er­age and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tors over the three days.

He ac­knowl­edged the es­ti­mate of $1,000 spent by each vis­i­tor was ex­treme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, con­sid­er­ing tick­ets for some all-in­clu­sive fetes were close to $2,000.

He not­ed the trick­le-down ef­fect was felt by road­side ven­dors, taxi ser­vices and oth­er small pro­pri­etors, who re­port­ed boom­ing busi­ness for the sea­son.

Amid the suc­cess, Williams re­mained scep­ti­cal of the 60,000 ar­rivals pro­ject­ed by the au­thor­i­ties. He be­lieves the ac­tu­al num­ber of vis­i­tors for the Car­ni­val was clos­er to a third of that fig­ure.

He said lo­cal da­ta showed close to 32,000 vis­i­tors ar­rived for the 2026 Car­ni­val in Trinidad.

“I know they not do­ing mea­sure­ment here, and it is some­thing they ought to do. They must have some de­part­ment that mea­sures where peo­ple com­ing from, where they stay­ing, how many are in ho­tels, how many in vil­las. Those da­ta would be so nice, so we can do prop­er plan­ning go­ing for­ward.”

He called on the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion to es­tab­lish a re­search and de­vel­op­ment team to help as­sess the fes­ti­val.

“The da­ta is what gonna dri­ve the Car­ni­val for­ward, oth­er­wise we gonna be guess­ing.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett and To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion CEO Kern Cow­an for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion head Kevon McKen­na said there were over 40 fetes for the Car­ni­val. He said his mem­bers are grate­ful to pa­trons for their tremen­dous sup­port.

“It was def­i­nite­ly a big change from over the years. The Car­ni­val is build­ing. I al­ways say that once the stake­hold­ers come to­geth­er, we can do amaz­ing things,” he said.

He not­ed the ap­pear­ance of Ja­maican dance­hall star Spice showed celebri­ties are pay­ing at­ten­tion.

McKen­na said the re­stric­tion on songs with vi­o­lent lyrics from this year’s fes­ti­val was al­so em­braced by pa­trons.