T&T does not have a mar­ket­ing prob­lem. We have an eco­nom­ic po­si­tion­ing prob­lem.

Every year, we speak about Car­ni­val as cul­ture, cel­e­bra­tion and iden­ti­ty. All true. But we con­tin­ue to un­der­play a big­ger re­al­i­ty that should sit square­ly in the busi­ness sec­tion and in Cab­i­net notes alike:

Car­ni­val is one of the most bank­able eco­nom­ic plat­forms in the coun­try, yet we still man­age it like an event.

In glob­al terms, that is the equiv­a­lent of own­ing a high-per­form­ing ex­port brand and choos­ing not to scale it.

The da­ta al­ready tells us some­thing im­por­tant. Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) Sur­vey of De­part­ing Vis­i­tors, to­tal ex­pen­di­ture by Car­ni­val vis­i­tors was es­ti­mat­ed at $482,477,340 in 2025, up from $413,366,100 in 2024. The same CSO se­ries es­ti­mates 34,194 Car­ni­val vis­i­tors in 2025 com­pared with 28,700 in 2024.

Those are not ab­stract fig­ures. That is for­eign ex­change, em­ploy­ment, trans­port de­mand, ac­com­mo­da­tion spend, cater­ing, re­tail, de­sign, beau­ty ser­vices, se­cu­ri­ty, lo­gis­tics and a whole ecosys­tem of mi­cro and small busi­ness­es that de­pend on the sea­son to sta­bilise their an­nu­al in­come.

Even in a wider tourism con­text, T&T has been claw­ing back mo­men­tum. The Min­istry of Fi­nance’s Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2025 re­ports that to­tal vis­i­tor ar­rivals in­creased by 3.3 per cent to 463,205 in 2024, com­pared with 448,397 in 2023, with growth sup­port­ed by high­er in­ter­na­tion­al air ar­rivals.

So yes, Car­ni­val mat­ters. The more strate­gic ques­tion is: how do we stop treat­ing it as a two-day peak and start treat­ing it as eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture?

Car­ni­val land­scape is more than fete cul­ture

The most im­por­tant shift in Car­ni­val is not cos­tumes, tick­et prices or which band is trend­ing. It is that Car­ni­val has be­come a pow­er­ful, glob­al­ly leg­i­ble prod­uct that aligns with how mod­ern con­sumers buy ex­pe­ri­ences.

Peo­ple now trav­el for mo­ments that give them iden­ti­ty, con­tent and con­nec­tion. Car­ni­val pro­vides all three. It is al­so one of the few ex­pe­ri­ences where Tr&T is not com­pet­ing as a small is­land des­ti­na­tion, but as a cat­e­go­ry leader. In brand terms, we do not sim­ply par­tic­i­pate. We orig­i­nate.

But lead­er­ship brings re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. When you own the cat­e­go­ry, you can­not leave growth to chance.

You build sys­tems around it.

We are see­ing new sig­nals of scale. Re­port­ing on Min­istry of Tourism find­ings for Car­ni­val 2025, the T&T Guardian cit­ed pre­lim­i­nary air ar­rival da­ta of 41,022 for the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, with peaks of rough­ly 3,500 dai­ly ar­rivals on key days. The same re­port notes a split that in­clud­ed 28,162 non-na­tion­als and 12,860 re­turn­ing na­tion­als or di­as­po­ra in that pre­lim­i­nary count.

This mat­ters for busi­ness be­cause it points to two de­mand pools with dif­fer­ent buy­ing be­hav­iours: first­time or oc­ca­sion­al vis­i­tors who need pack­ag­ing, guid­ance and struc­tured op­tions and di­as­po­ra trav­ellers who spend dif­fer­ent­ly, stay longer and of­ten sup­port fam­i­ly-based com­merce.

Al­so no­table is the in­creas­ing role of pay­ments da­ta in un­der­stand­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. The Guardian re­port ref­er­enced Visa com­men­tary in­di­cat­ing 10 per cent growth in cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions dur­ing Car­ni­val 2025 com­pared with the Car­ni­val dates the year be­fore, with the high­est vol­ume of in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions com­ing from the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom.

Pay­ments da­ta is not per­fect, but it is fast. And speed mat­ters when you are man­ag­ing a high-ve­loc­i­ty sea­son.

Car­ni­val cre­ates val­ue, but we still leak val­ue

Car­ni­val’s eco­nom­ic im­pact is re­al, but it is al­so un­even. Some seg­ments are high­ly mon­e­tised and pro­fes­sion­al­ly struc­tured. Oth­ers re­main in­for­mal, un­der­cap­i­talised and vul­ner­a­ble to shocks.

The leak­ages show up in fa­mil­iar ways:

• Vis­i­tor spend that con­cen­trates in a nar­row cor­ri­dor and does not dif­fuse across com­mu­ni­ties;

• Cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs who have glob­al de­mand but lim­it­ed ac­cess to work­ing cap­i­tal, ex­port readi­ness and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pro­tec­tion;

• A lack of stan­dard­ised da­ta that makes it hard to quan­ti­fy re­turn on pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment; and

• Sea­son­al­i­ty risk, where a busi­ness can have an ex­cel­lent Car­ni­val and still strug­gle to sur­vive the oth­er ten months

These are not cul­tur­al prob­lems. They are struc­tur­al prob­lems, which means they are solv­able with pol­i­cy de­sign and com­mer­cial dis­ci­pline.

The strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty: move from “fes­ti­val econ­o­my” to “cre­ative in­dus­try sys­tem”

If T&T wants to ex­pand non-en­er­gy growth, Car­ni­val is a prac­ti­cal place to start be­cause it al­ready proves mar­ket de­mand. The task is not to in­vent a sec­tor. The task is to or­gan­ise one.

A cred­i­ble strat­e­gy would have five pil­lars.

1) Treat da­ta as a na­tion­al as­set, not an af­ter­thought

The CSO vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture se­ries is valu­able, but we need faster, more gran­u­lar re­port­ing that can guide de­ci­sions in re­al time.

A mod­ern Car­ni­val econ­o­my should track: vis­i­tor ori­gin mar­kets; av­er­age length of stay; cat­e­go­ry spend; ac­com­mo­da­tion dis­per­sion; event at­ten­dance pat­terns and re­peat in­tent.

Pay­ments da­ta, im­mi­gra­tion da­ta and struc­tured sur­veys can work to­geth­er, but they must be de­signed to an­swer busi­ness ques­tions, not just pro­duce a re­port af­ter the sea­son ends.

2) Build Car­ni­val pack­ag­ing like a se­ri­ous ex­port prod­uct

If a vis­i­tor has to re­ly on What­sApp for­wards and chance to plan a Car­ni­val trip, we are leav­ing mon­ey on the ta­ble. Pack­ag­ing is how you scale an ex­pe­ri­ence econ­o­my. That means struc­tured bun­dles, ver­i­fied list­ings, trans­port and safe­ty as­sur­ances and a co­her­ent vis­i­tor jour­ney that is easy to buy.

This is not about sani­tis­ing Car­ni­val. It is about re­duc­ing fric­tion for the glob­al cus­tomer.

3) Mon­e­tise dig­i­tal­ly be­yond the sea­son

Car­ni­val’s con­tent foot­print is enor­mous. The ques­tion is who cap­tures the val­ue. Dig­i­tal com­merce should not be lim­it­ed to cos­tumes and tick­ets. It can in­clude sub­scrip­tions, pre­mi­um livestream ex­pe­ri­ences, cre­ator part­ner­ships, brand­ed con­tent li­cens­ing and di­as­po­ra-tar­get­ed ex­pe­ri­ences that run year-round.

4) For­malise cre­ative busi­ness­es so they can scale

Many of our cre­ative op­er­a­tors are bril­liant, but bril­liance alone is not a busi­ness mod­el. They need ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment sup­port, ex­port fa­cil­i­ta­tion, con­tract lit­er­a­cy and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty frame­works that pro­tect earn­ings.

When cre­atives can op­er­ate like firms, the econ­o­my ben­e­fits like an econ­o­my, not just like a sea­son.

5) Align Car­ni­val with tourism, trade and in­vest­ment po­si­tion­ing

Car­ni­val is a front door to the coun­try. The vis­i­tor who comes for Car­ni­val can re­turn for con­fer­ences, leisure, in­vest­ment ex­plo­ration and even lo­ca­tion work across film and events. That con­ver­sion does not hap­pen au­to­mat­i­cal­ly. It hap­pens when the coun­try has a joined-up ap­proach and us­es the sea­son as a lead gen­er­a­tor for oth­er na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

Why this mat­ters now

T&T is nav­i­gat­ing a glob­al en­vi­ron­ment where at­ten­tion is cur­ren­cy. Coun­tries are com­pet­ing for vis­i­tors, buy­ers, in­vestors, tal­ent and part­ner­ships. We of­ten dis­cuss di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion as if it re­quires brand new in­dus­tries, but some­times di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is about scal­ing what al­ready works.

Car­ni­val al­ready works.

The CSO’s es­ti­mates show that Car­ni­val vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture can reach hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, and the 2025 es­ti­mate of TT$482.5 mil­lion un­der­lines the size of the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance’s re­port­ing on to­tal vis­i­tor ar­rivals in 2024 shows the wider re­cov­ery con­text and why the tourism and ex­pe­ri­ence econ­o­my can­not be treat­ed as mar­gin­al.

The busi­ness case is clear. What has been miss­ing is the mind­set shift: Car­ni­val is not a cost cen­tre or a cul­tur­al side note. It is a rev­enue plat­form, a glob­al brand and a test case for how T&T can win in the mod­ern econ­o­my.

A sharp­er na­tion­al ques­tion

If we treat­ed Car­ni­val as eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture, what would we do dif­fer­ent­ly?

• We would in­vest in da­ta ca­pa­bil­i­ty as se­ri­ous­ly as we in­vest in stages and se­cu­ri­ty;

• We would build year-round cre­ative com­merce, not sea­son­al hus­tle;

• We would pack­age ex­pe­ri­ences like ex­ports and mea­sure out­comes like a board would;

• We would treat the cre­ative sec­tor as a growth sec­tor and build the sys­tems to sup­port it;

Car­ni­val will al­ways be about joy. That is its mag­ic. But joy does not need to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly frag­ile.

T&T has some­thing most coun­tries do not: a glob­al­ly recog­nised prod­uct with deep emo­tion­al eq­ui­ty and proven de­mand. The next step is to man­age it with the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves.

Be­cause the re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty is not just Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. The re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty is what Car­ni­val can do for Trinidad and To­ba­go, every month of the year.

Kirk Ram­per­sad is a se­nior busi­ness and mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive and a com­men­ta­tor for the T&T Guardian. He writes on mar­ket­ing trends, con­sumer be­hav­iour, in­no­va­tion and strate­gic growth.

kirkram@hot­mail.com linkedin.com/in/kirk-ram­per­sad-mba-5ab579268