Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The down­turn in the econ­o­my seems al­ready to have had a neg­a­tive im­pact on Car­ni­val 2016 fetes and events as two pro­mot­ers say spon­sor­ship has been ei­ther hard to come by or un­avail­able since some spon­sors have pulled out.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of SouthEx, George Singh, who pro­motes the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch (CSM) com­pe­ti­tion, said the cuts have been deep.

It costs close to $10 mil­lion to host the CSM, in­clu­sive of prize mon­ey. Singh said it was dif­fi­cult to say the num­ber of spon­sors but that there was a drop by 50 per cent.

He told the Sun­day Guardian, "In years gone by, spon­sors would jump on board even if it was with small­er amounts but this year they have pulled back com­plete­ly."

He added that cer­tain cor­po­rate spon­sors had "gone off" the Car­ni­val par­ty scene.

Singh said it was un­der­stand­able that the spon­sor­ship pie was small­er for 2016 since al­most all pro­mot­ers send re­quests to the same com­pa­nies.

"The thing about it is that it's a small pool of peo­ple that sup­port Car­ni­val. The cor­po­rate mar­ket is very few and so you have all these pro­mot­ers go­ing to the same peo­ple so they are bur­dened with all these re­quests and there is on­ly so much they can ac­com­mo­date."

Telecom­min­ca­tions gi­ant TSTT said it would be cut­ting back on spon­sor­ship of events as Car­ni­val was com­ing right on the heels of the pub­lic cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas, amidst a slow­ing econ­o­my and low en­er­gy prices. Dig­i­cel and Carib Brew­ery said they were en­sur­ing they re­ceived val­ue for what they put out.

This year there are over 150 all-in­clu­sives, cool­er fetes and break­fast par­ties spread over Jan­u­ary 1 to Ash Wednes­day–a to­tal of 41 days, with as many as 60 in the five week­ends of Jan­u­ary and 90 in the first ten days of Feb­ru­ary.

On Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day, there are ex­pect­ed to be 19 events, while 18 are card­ed for Car­ni­val Sun­day.

Al­ready ten days in­to the 2016 Car­ni­val sea­son, one high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed fete–So­ka in Mo­ka–which was held last week­end, saw a low­er turnout than in pre­vi­ous years. And there is al­so word that some events have "fall­en off the cal­en­dar."

The De­cem­ber an­nounce­ment that T&T was in a re­ces­sion seems to have res­onat­ed with sev­er­al par­ty­go­ers who have ex­pressed mixed views about the fetes they in­tend to pa­tro­n­ise.

Some have said they will be cau­tious­ly watch­ing their spend­ing habits while look­ing for val­ue for their mon­ey in a wave of fetes rang­ing from $250 to as high as $3,200.

Har­ris, who pro­motes Army Fete, al­so said pro­mot­ers are faced with chal­lenges like spon­sor­ship. "We aren't get­ting the kind of spon­sor­ship we en­joyed in the past but there are ways and means you can ad­ver­tise oth­er­wise." He said he was cap­i­tal­is­ing on so­cial me­dia for ad­ver­tis­ing.

He did not want to dis­close the cost to host the fete but said he was still in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Har­ris said there was no doubt that spon­sors have held back this year be­cause of the re­ces­sion. Asked if the sup­port was cut by 100 per cent, he on­ly said, "We are not get­ting the sup­port we used to re­ceive in the past."

Army Fete will be held on Jan­u­ary 29.

Har­ris said with three weeks still to go for the fete, it was a bit ear­ly to gauge sup­port from feters.

"I think we need to wait and see. It is Car­ni­val and we love our Car­ni­val. We live for Christ­mas and Car­ni­val. I am still op­ti­mistic it will be a good one."

Both pro­mot­ers, along with Randy Glas­gow of Randy Glas­gow Pro­mo­tions and Der­rick Lewis, events pro­duc­er and founder of Is­land Peo­ple, are op­ti­mistic that the sea­son will be a suc­cess.

Busi­ness­es weigh in

Act­ing se­nior man­ag­er–brand, pub­lic re­la­tions and ex­ter­nal af­fairs at TSTT, Graeme Suite, said al­though the com­pa­ny would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce its car­ni­val ex­pens­es on par­ty events, it would con­tin­ue to be part of the en­er­gy and ex­cite­ment in car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and would main­tain its pres­ence in var­i­ous as­pects of the cul­ture at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, Panora­ma and in tra­di­tion­al ca­lyp­so tents.

Suite said, "The eco­nom­ic cli­mate will con­tin­ue to de­mand that in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and com­pa­nies make pru­dent de­ci­sions on man­ag­ing fi­nances while sus­tain­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty."

He said the con­cen­tra­tion of events with­in a few short weeks pre­sent­ed the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­tract­ing con­sumer spend­ing at Car­ni­val and as such the onus was on com­pa­nies like TSTT to find a bal­ance be­tween its long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to cul­ture and its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cus­tomers.

Mean­while, Carib Brew­ery spon­sor­ship and events man­ag­er Col­in Mur­ray said his com­pa­ny has not stopped spon­sor­ship.

He said, "We are still sup­port­ing the events we have sup­port­ed over the years.

"We have in fact looked at the events in terms of the short sea­son and the clash­es that some events are go­ing to have. Where you may have sup­port­ed an event that may have drawn 4,000 peo­ple, we are still sup­port­ing the event, but if it on­ly draws 2,000 peo­ple we may ob­vi­ous­ly have to look at what spend we need to put."

He said the com­pa­ny was cer­tain­ly more mind­ful of its spend and get­ting full val­ue for what­ev­er spon­sor­ship it put out.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, Pen­ny Gomez, yes­ter­day said, "What we do is that every year we eval­u­ate our part­ner­ship and it is re­al­ly what best aligns with our spon­sor­ship strat­e­gy...those are the spon­sor­ships that we will go with and what we will sup­port."

She said it was not a mat­ter of cut­ting back, just that some­times spon­sored events may vary and each one had a dif­fer­ent bud­get.

"So de­pend­ing on what that bud­get is and what we de­cide works best for us and the align­ment, that is what we will go with."

Gomez said the com­pa­ny was "pret­ty much in­volved in cul­ture and Car­ni­val."

Feters will be se­lec­tive

and watch $$

Glas­gow, who pro­motes Ladies Night Out, Chut­ney Brass and the Al­ter­na­tive Com­e­dy Shows, said peo­ple were "ob­serv­ing their dol­lar."

He said, "I think the mere fact that the an­nounce­ment was made brought on a lev­el of con­scious­ness that peo­ple need­ed to watch how they spend. It's look­ing tough."

He said he was hop­ing that pa­trons would choose his events since they can­not at­tend all that were be­ing of­fered. Ladies Night Out will stage its 13th edi­tion on Jan­u­ary 23 and will fea­ture in­ter­na­tion­al singer Jon Seca­da.

"It is a bet­ter show with bet­ter tal­ent and de­spite the re­ces­sion, we are work­ing to make mon­ey and give pa­trons val­ue for their mon­ey."

?Glas­gow said tick­et prices for the com­e­dy shows start­ing af­ter Car­ni­val had been re­duced by $25 since "mon­ey is now hard­er to come by."

He said, "We have to cut prof­its but we rather the lev­el of the shows re­main at high stan­dards."

Mean­while, Singh said for this 2016 sea­son, peo­ple would be se­lec­tive. He said they would look at the price of fetes and the val­ue they're get­ting.

Re­gard­ing CSM, Singh said, "We have been mar­ket­ing CSM21 as some­thing dif­fer­ent. The rea­son we are do­ing that is be­cause it is some­thing dif­fer­ent. It is not the nor­mal car­ni­val event; it is a chut­ney so­ca event."

He said the vibe and feel­ing were dif­fer­ent and be­lieved that they would main­tain their mar­ket.

Un­der the pa­tron­age of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Singh said the all-in­clu­sive Red, priced at $1,200, would cater to an af­flu­ent crowd.

He said, "It is a new event and we have been told that we are tak­ing a chance in­tro­duc­ing a new event in a re­ces­sion and in a short sea­son but we are cater­ing to a very ex­clu­sive crowd."

Lewis said he be­lieved peo­ple would be con­ser­v­a­tive at first, es­pe­cial­ly in the first cou­ple of weeks. "They would be lis­ten­ing for things like lead­ing mu­sic and songs to en­cour­age them fur­ther as the tem­per­a­ture ris­es.

"I think some peo­ple are go­ing to let go some of those ini­tial ap­pre­hen­sive feel­ings about what they are go­ing to do...they will make some choic­es," he said.

Lewis said while peo­ple would be se­lec­tive, they would not aban­don the fetes.

"Peo­ple will be se­lec­tive and will choose the fetes that have the most val­ue and the events that are school-based or cause-based."

Old Hi­lar­i­ans':

We have loy­al pa­trons

Co-chair of the Old Hi­lar­i­ans' Fete, Wan­da Bernard, said on Fri­day it was not the first time the fete was be­ing held dur­ing a re­ces­sion nor dur­ing a short sea­son. This year is the 20th in­stal­ment of the fete with a $50 in­crease from last year's $850.

Bernard said, "We man­age it in such a way that we can hope­ful­ly en­joy an even­tu­al suc­cess be­cause dur­ing times of a re­ces­sion it is ex­pect­ed that there would be an im­pact on tick­et sales.

"What is in­cum­bent on all pro­mot­ers is to man­age the im­ple­men­ta­tion cre­ative­ly so that while we of­fer a pre­mi­um event, we can still en­sure we man­age the ex­pen­di­ture pru­dent­ly."

She said the fete has its loy­al pa­trons and by host­ing it at the school, they could see where their mon­ey was go­ing.

Par­ty­go­ers hold­ing their hand

In­di­ra Heer­alal-Ram, who has been at­tend­ing fetes for years, said she has be­come se­lec­tive since the prices have be­come too ex­or­bi­tant and she felt she was not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey.

This year she said she may at­tend the pop­u­lar Beach House all-in­clu­sive with a price tag of $1,400.

For 34-year-old Ruth Romil­ly, this sea­son she'll be at­tend­ing three fetes–In­som­nia, Il­lu­sions Black 2 Blue cool­er fete and Headley's All-in­clu­sive.

Romil­ly said, "The most I'll spend on an all-in­clu­sive is $1,000 see­ing that I won't be at­tend­ing many of the fetes.

"It's all about tight­en­ing my belt and watch­ing how I spend."

She said she want­ed to get val­ue for her mon­ey and was look­ing for "a good lime."

Ka­ri­na Dhani­ram, on the oth­er hand, would not spend more than $250 on a cool­er fete. The 23-year-old said she's nev­er at­tend­ed any all-in­clu­sives be­cause she can­not eat or drink any­where close to $800 or $900.

So far, she has been to Tribe Ice and will go to iUP and Kees' con­cert.

Last year she at­tend­ed more than five cool­er fetes but be­cause of the re­ces­sion, she can on­ly at­tend three this year.

"I'm tak­ing the re­ces­sion an­nounce­ment se­ri­ous­ly," she said.