Tonight is Di­manche Gras, the pre­cur­sor to the cul­mi­na­tion of the Car­ni­val sea­son with Pa­rade of the Bands.

The feed­back com­ing over the past few weeks has been pos­i­tive.

The gov­ern­ment has boast­ed about size­able at­ten­dance at Car­ni­val events and tourist ar­rival num­bers, while many pop­u­lar fetes still com­mand­ed large au­di­ences with di­verse pre­sen­ta­tions.

That ev­i­dence sug­gest­ed the sea­son placed ini­tial un­cer­tain­ty in the rear view mir­ror.

That un­cer­tain­ty was par­tial­ly due to the ten­sions in Venezuela in late De­cem­ber and ear­ly Jan­u­ary, but large­ly due to gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy change,s which di­rect­ly im­pact­ed event pro­mot­ers.

Ad­vo­cate for the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA), Paige de Leon, ex­plained to Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that while the show went on, it was more due to the cre­ative in­dus­try’s dri­ve to push through in spite of those ob­sta­cles.

“This sea­son has re­quired event pro­duc­ers to be­come even more cre­ative and more re­source­ful and more re­silient than they usu­al­ly have to be when they have to pro­duce a very hec­tic, short, in­tense sea­son. It’s been a chal­leng­ing sea­son,” De Leon sum­marised,

In that re­gard, the TTPA is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to meet with the Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers as soon as pos­si­ble so that the chal­lenges faced in 2026 would not be as glar­ing in an even short­er sea­son set to come in 2027.

“When the post mortems are done, some are be­ing done now, and there will be many more post mortems done, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion has main­tained a po­si­tion of lob­by­ing for sin­cere and gen­uine col­lab­o­ra­tion,” she said, adding,

“The rea­son for the word­ing, sin­cere col­lab­o­ra­tion is be­cause every­body who op­er­ates in an en­vi­ron­ment wants to do so in a way that fa­cil­i­tates good re­la­tion­ships.”

De Leon said the as­so­ci­a­tion wants to have more con­sul­ta­tive dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

“These dis­cus­sions, I think now, are go­ing to be forced to be done much ear­li­er than we have been tra­di­tion­al­ly do­ing in the past, be­cause in or­der for us to find the so­lu­tions, time and grace needs to be tak­en and giv­en to all par­ties so we can fig­ure out a way for­ward that bet­ter fa­cil­i­tates the busi­ness of cul­ture, the busi­ness of tourism, the busi­ness of events,” she con­tin­ued fur­ther.

She said for the busi­ness of cul­ture, tourism and events to con­tin­ue while sat­is­fy­ing some of the con­cerns and the chal­lenges raised by var­i­ous quar­ters of the so­ci­ety in­volves lob­by­ing that is a po­lit­i­cal ef­fort, a so­cial ef­fort and a busi­ness ef­fort.

The main chal­lenges faced by the pro­mot­ers were re­lat­ed to the de­ci­sion to in­crease the cost of al­co­hol, as well as the ban on the use of var­i­ous sport­ing venues for fetes, as a re­sult of noise pol­lu­tion com­plaints that left sev­er­al pro­mot­ers scram­bling for venues at a late stage in their plan­ning process.

She said, “It was man­aged with tremen­dous dif­fi­cul­ty. And so, I be­gan the in­ter­view by giv­ing you an hon­est ren­der­ing of the sea­son. It has been a chal­leng­ing one, and the event pro­duc­tion sec­tor has had to be very re­silient. They’ve had to be re­source­ful, and they have had to be nim­ble, which is a call that isn’t made of all busi­ness­peo­ple who wish to sur­vive.”

Some of these chal­lenges proved too much for many events lead­ing to can­cel­la­tions and post­pone­ments.

Oth­ers were ex­e­cut­ed on a small­er scale but de Leon ex­plained while those that were ex­e­cut­ed near to pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tions may have ap­peared to be suc­cess­ful, pro­mot­ers record­ed sig­nif­i­cant loss­es across the in­dus­try.

“I think the ques­tion you’re ask­ing is, have there been loss­es? There have been loss­es, yes. Be­cause of all of the fac­tors that I would have out­lined, as well as oth­er fac­tors,” she said.

Tick­et Fed­er­a­tion con­firmed that no few­er than 40 events that ap­peared on its Car­ni­val cal­en­dar in 2025, did not find a space in its 2026 events list.

One such pro­mot­er who did find space for his events was Randy Glas­gow, but he found so­lace in the fact that he was able to con­tribute in oth­er as­pects and events.

“We were not lucky in get­ting venues for one rea­son or the oth­er. Ladies Night Out, Com­e­dy and Chut­ney and de­cid­ed we will sit this Car­ni­val out un­til get­ting a call to mar­ket both vil­lages and take over the run­ning of John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage from day 2 un­til end on Jan­u­ary 28,” said Glas­gow, “Very won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence and I’m tak­ing this time to thank Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin and the chair­man and deputy chair­man of Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion. We are al­so lend­ing mar­ket­ing sup­port to Di­manche Gras and Machel.”

Glas­gow’s sit­u­a­tion un­der­lined the piv­ots many pro­mot­ers had to make, and de Leon ex­plained not all would have found av­enues like Glas­gow.

“Every event would have had a dif­fer­ent tol­er­ance for ab­sorp­tion of those shocks, right? It’s like any eco­nom­ic shock, you have to man­age the needs of the client and the ex­pec­ta­tion of the client, which is more im­por­tant when it comes to Car­ni­val.

“Peo­ple have an ex­pec­ta­tion of a cer­tain qual­i­ty of prod­uct, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they are con­sum­ing as­pi­ra­tional prod­ucts, which we con­sid­er to be the high-end all-in­clu­sives and the high-end mas bands.

But even the tier be­low that, the ex­pec­ta­tion of qual­i­ty is very high, and so man­ag­ing that ex­pec­ta­tion, which is key to brand con­ti­nu­ity, along­side man­ag­ing the eco­nom­ic shock, was a dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion that had to be made, and nat­u­ral­ly it would have net­ted loss­es,” said de Leon.

“Each event would have had to do a tremen­dous amount of ma­noeu­vring to keep the brand promise, but al­so to treat with the re­al­i­ties that they faced, i.e. changes in venue, the in­abil­i­ty to man­age reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles on the ba­sis of that, as well as the hike in al­co­hol prices, gen­er­al in­crease in prices for ser­vices, for goods, for im­ports, it over­all re­dounds to the abil­i­ty of this pro­duc­er to still give you a good qual­i­ty prod­uct. So it has been a very dif­fi­cult chal­lenge.”

She said the meet­ing with the gov­ern­ment was cru­cial to help main­tain T&T’s sta­tus as the Mec­ca of Car­ni­val, as the lo­cal event has re­mained a stan­dard bear­er for many Car­ni­vals around the world. De Leon added that the con­ver­sa­tion con­cern­ing cost in the eco­nom­ic cli­mate was al­so im­por­tant in that re­gard.

“Any de­crease in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty cre­ates chal­lenges for all of the peo­ple up and down the val­ue chain, and that’s a re­al­i­ty that we do have to face. And in the pri­vate sec­tor, the job is al­ways to as­sess your prod­uct, as­sess its vi­a­bil­i­ty, and tweak, change and amend to en­sure that the busi­ness can still con­tin­ue.

“So that’s the mode that many event pro­duc­ers are cur­rent­ly in, an as­sess­ment of the en­vi­ron­ment, so that what­ev­er changes need to be made can, in fact, be made in a way that is pro­fes­sion­al and that con­tin­ues to sup­port the growth of brand T&T as the pre­mier event des­ti­na­tion of the Caribbean,” she said.

De Leon re­mind­ed that Car­ni­val is very much a na­tion­al fes­ti­val, which re­quired holis­tic con­sid­er­a­tion.

“We’re re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to peo­ple com­ing out and sup­port­ing and be­ing a part of our na­tion­al fes­ti­val, which we all love and which we all want to en­sure con­tin­ues to be that beau­ti­ful, flag­ship, unique val­ue propo­si­tion of our coun­try T&T.

“We don’t want to di­lute or lose the mag­ic that is our Car­ni­val,” she said, not­ing that oth­er coun­tries have found­ed ma­jor fes­ti­vals that work giv­en cul­tur­al im­por­tance, draw­ing di­rect ex­am­ple to the run­ning of the Bulls in Pam­plona, where cit­i­zens based there of­ten have to seek al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for the event.

She stressed that the pro­mot­ers do not in­tend to be dis­rup­tive but urged that the dis­cus­sion take the wider eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.