T&T’s at­trac­tive­ness as a Car­ni­val des­ti­na­tion has been one of the con­sis­tent things about us. This year, how­ev­er, was al­ways go­ing to be dif­fer­ent.

With two years of COVID-19 forc­ing its can­cel­la­tion, T&T touched un­chart­ed ground in hav­ing to restart our show un­sure of the post-pan­dem­ic prospects amid on­go­ing health con­cerns and high­er cost of liv­ing glob­al­ly.

Last year’s Taste of Car­ni­val was a help­ful gauge, as the few events at­tract­ed thou­sands. An­oth­er mea­sure, more so of in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand, was Tribe Car­ni­val and Machel Mon­tano’s Mele Des­ti­na­tion Cruise event in Can­cun, Mex­i­co, last April, which repli­cat­ed T&T’s Car­ni­val and at­tract­ed a huge turnout.

Yet, be­cause the cost to Amer­i­cans trav­el­ling to Mex­i­co in the spring is sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er than trav­el­ling to T&T in the win­ter, it wasn’t a trust­wor­thy gauge.

This Car­ni­val, there­fore, was the on­ly re­al way to know how the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would re­spond.

By the mid­dle of the sea­son, how­ev­er, we got an­swers, as in­ter­na­tion­al flights and ho­tels were around 80 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

As the sea­son neared its end, we knew this year’s Car­ni­val had been a re­sound­ing suc­cess via the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing to T&T for the rev­el­ry.

While we must ad­dress the avail­abil­i­ty of flights for next year’s event, the high de­mand this year was al­so a good sign that our Car­ni­val brand, one of our biggest for­eign rev­enue earn­ers, is still strong.

The ar­rival of in­ter­na­tion­al stars like West In­dies bats­man Chris Gayle danc­ing his way through Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, broad­cast to an au­di­ence of over four mil­lion on his so­cial me­dia plat­form, helped to re­mind the world that our prod­uct re­mains ex­cit­ing and at­trac­tive.

And while we are grate­ful for Gayle’s act, we are al­so hap­py for the ex­po­sure brought by daugh­ter of the soil, mega in­ter­na­tion­al rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj.

Mi­naj is among the top fe­male artistes in the world and com­mend­ably, her rise to star­dom has seen her con­nect her fol­low­ers to her home­land.

Her 2012 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Machel Mon­tano and Bun­ji Gar­lin, Pound the Alarm, was shot in Bel­mont and fea­tured the cul­ture and scenery of T&T ex­ten­sive­ly. It has since been viewed 280 mil­lion times on Youtube.

Her re­turn to T&T in 2020 for Car­ni­val was al­so ex­ten­sive­ly cov­ered by tra­di­tion­al and on­line me­dia and the same ap­plied to her re­turn this year, as she again ex­pos­es T&T to her vast fol­low­ing with videos and pho­tos on her 211 mil­lion-strong In­sta­gram page.

Her ex­po­sure al­so in­cludes a Youtube link to the so­ca Shake the Place by Mon­tano and De­stra Gar­cia, in which she sings a few vers­es as well.

Mi­naj has even post­ed a video with Mon­tano, De­stra and Patrice Roberts, la­belling it as “Leg­endary footage of the greats of my coun­try,” and ex­pressed her pride in them and in T&T.

This ex­po­sure, that reach­es be­yond her mul­ti-mil­lion fol­low­ing to mil­lions more via on­line shares and oth­er me­dia cov­er­age, is a gift from Mi­naj to T&T that gives our Car­ni­val a ma­jor boost.

This is the type of mar­ket­ing we can­not af­ford as a small coun­try and for which we must be grate­ful.

With the ex­ist­ing strength of the Car­ni­val prod­uct and the added mar­ket­ing from Mi­naj and oth­er celebri­ties, T&T’s Car­ni­val is cer­tain­ly poised for a fu­ture suc­cess.