by Rubadiri Vic­tor

On Au­gust 22 2025, at the Tourism In­vest­ment Fo­rum, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj said the gov­ern­ment plans to es­tab­lish an all-year Car­ni­val City at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port of Spain. Ma­haraj said the aim of the Car­ni­val City was to cre­ate a per­ma­nent cul­tur­al at­trac­tion to sus­tain vis­i­tor in­ter­est through­out the year.

The the­sis

There are two mod­els for such a City: a per­former-based mod­el will fail. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly. That Walt Dis­ney theme-park mod­el can­not work here. We do not have the eco­nom­ics, pro­duc­tion pro­to­cols or tourism cre­den­tials to do it. What we have is an ‘arte­fact-rich’ cul­ture which al­lows us to cre­ate a Won­der-of-the-World mu­se­um des­ti­na­tion which we can then pro­gramme events with­in. That mu­se­um-des­ti­na­tion mod­el is the one that can work. But for that to work we have to learn ‘De­sign’.

Min­is­ters and of­fi­cials al­so have not met with stake­hold­ers who orig­i­nat­ed these ideas, or those hold­ing crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge. Fail­ure to do this will al­so re­sult in cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure.

The split be­tween John Cu­pid and Fla­va

The 2026 ex­pand­ed Car­ni­val Vil­lage—split be­tween ‘Fla­va’ and the old­er John Cu­pid Vil­lage—stress-test­ed the idea of the Car­ni­val City giv­ing us in­valu­able da­ta. In­cor­po­rat­ing the Sa­van­nah food-court in­to Fla­va was bril­liant. It brought food, the main dri­ver of foot traf­fic, in­to the Vil­lage idea. The John Cu­pid Vil­lage leaned more in­to tra­di­tion­al ar­ti­san crafts, and more ma­ture main-stage pro­gram­ming. Its de­sign was not as slick as Fla­va and suf­fered in com­par­i­son. The Vil­lages were too far apart with­out har­mo­nious walk­ways con­nect­ing them. Will Car­ni­val City con­tin­ue this split? Or will it ex­pand FLA­VA to in­clude the Cu­pid el­e­ments?

More ma­ture crowds head­ed to Cu­pid Vil­lage, younger crowds to Fla­va. How­ev­er, Cu­pid on­ly flared to life when there were big shows, not be­ing a draw in it­self. The craft mar­ket ven­dors suf­fered ter­ri­bly. The Cu­pid’s biggest fail­ure was the woe­ful Car­ni­val ex­hi­bi­tion. The in­for­ma­tion was ba­sic and the dis­play of tra­di­tion­al mas- sub-stan­dard. A prop­er Car­ni­val ex­hi­bi­tion, with high de­sign and mul­ti-me­dia el­e­ments, can be a des­ti­na­tion in it­self, draw­ing thou­sands. We don’t un­der­stand this. De­sign. This is why we re­ly on events to dri­ve tourism. It is al­so why our tourism prod­uct fails…

De­sign­ing des­ti­na­tions—a na­tion­al fail

There are in­ter­na­tion­al mu­se­ums that make more mon­ey than our con­glom­er­ates. ‘Sav­age Beau­ty’—the posthu­mous ex­hi­bi­tion about avant-garde de­sign­er Alexan­der Mc Queen—at­tract­ed 661,509 vis­i­tors at The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Mu­se­um of Mod­ern Art in New York in 2011 and 493,043 vis­i­tors in Lon­don in 2015. Great de­sign brings crowds! Prop­er de­sign around a mu­se­um-mod­el is what Car­ni­val City should be based on. We should see it as a re­hearsal for the cre­ation of the re­al Car­ni­val and Steel­band Mu­se­um which must take over the Grand Stand and house the Car­ni­val of the fu­ture.

Why the theme-park mod­el will fail

The ‘theme-park’ mod­el, which re­quires paid-per­form­ers to be your draw, is a recipe for fail­ure. We can­not sus­tain that freeco mod­el of the present Car­ni­val Vil­lage, which is sub­sidised to the tune of mil­lions.

Free ad­mis­sion is al­so not sus­tain­able. At the same time, Tri­nis are NOT go­ing to pay ad­mis­sion. An­oth­er mon­eti­sa­tion mod­el is nec­es­sary. We have ideas…

Car­ni­val City’s in­fra­struc­ture

Next. The Car­ni­val bud­get is $137 mil­lion. But it’s not Pan, Mas, and Ca­lyp­so get­ting that mon­ey. If we were to add all the mon­ey NCC gives pan, ca­lyp­so and aas stake­hold­ers for Car­ni­val we’ll prob­a­bly on­ly get about $30 mil­lion. The li­on’s share goes to ‘in­fra­struc­ture’- re­port­ed $45 mil­lion con­tracts for ‘tent rentals’, mil­lions to port-a-pot­tie com­pa­nies (with al­leged kick­backs)…

Which brings me to the oth­er leg of the un­sus­tain­abil­i­ty: Car­ni­val City is based on rent­ed equip­ment. Are we go­ing to long-term rent tents, floor­ing, stages, lights, sound equip­ment, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia? Are we go­ing to pay all the tech­ni­cians and sup­port per­son­nel that come with it?

The on­ly so­lu­tion is that the NCC be­comes an event com­pa­ny own­ing its hard­ware and soft­ware. It means ex­pand­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty of the NCC. This piv­ot saves us bil­lions in the long-term and cre­ates an in­come-earn­ing com­pa­ny. The up­grad­ing of the NCC man­age­ri­al­ly and in per­son­nel is the next step.

T&T has a vis­i­tor prob­lem

The oth­er is­sue is that T&T has no his­to­ry of at­tract­ing for­eign­ers out­side of Car­ni­val, Point Fortin Bor­ough Day and con­fer­ence tourism based around our Ho­tels. Our nor­mal tourism flows are a trick­le com­pared to oth­er na­tions. We’ve failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly to at­tract for­eign­ers for events we’ve in­vest­ed mil­lions in: World Beat; mul­ti­ple Jazz Fes­ti­vals; Culi­nary Fes­ti­vals; etc. We haven’t shown we have the tourism spend, per­son­nel or acu­men to bring in for­eign­ers out­side of our tra­di­tion­al at­trac­tions.

One of the rea­sons for this is that Trinidad does not have des­ti­na­tion. ‘Des­ti­na­tions’ are sites de­signed, cu­rat­ed and pro­grammed for the pur­pose of be­ing at­trac­tions. Apart from the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, Wild Fowl Trust and Asa Wright, we do not even have Grade-F sites! This, de­spite the fact that we have one of the rich­est cul­tur­al lega­cies on earth. We don’t un­der­stand how to de­sign and cu­rate lega­cy in­to Sites. That is our next fron­tier.

Con­clu­sion

For Car­ni­val City to work. there needs to be prop­er pub­lic trans­porta­tion leav­ing the Sa­van­nah to down­town Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons! This is crim­i­nal­ly ab­sent in Car­ni­val.

Al­so, how does Car­ni­val City fa­cil­i­tate the his­toric, but laps­ing, UN­ESCO des­ig­na­tion of Port-of-Spain as a City of Mu­sic? How does it fa­cil­i­tate the East Port- of-Spain Her­itage City and Growth Pole that has been abort­ed? Can it be an al­ter­na­tive to the State of Emer­gency-led ap­proach to hot-spots?

Fi­nal­ly: You can­not have Car­ni­val City if you have a dec­i­mat­ed cre­ative class. T&T’s cre­ative in­dus­try re­quires an ‘en­abling en­vi­ron­ment’ of pol­i­cy, leg­is­la­tion, in­sti­tu­tions and fis­cal sup­port for the Sec­tor to suc­ceed. Things like an Arts Coun­cil and 50 per cent lo­cal con­tent on broad­cast me­dia. Let’s en­gage health­ily and make Car­ni­val City a cat­a­lyst for good-sense trans­for­ma­tions all-round.