COVID-19 has al­ready led to the can­cel­la­tion car­ni­val events for 2020 all over the world, and T&T’s lead­ing mas and event prac­ti­tion­ers have con­tend­ed that if Car­ni­val 2021 is can­celled, the im­pact would be huge and dev­as­tat­ing on the coun­try’s econ­o­my. 

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian (SBG) leader of the Tribe Group Dean Ackin said: “The can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val will have a very big im­pact on the coun­try as Car­ni­val pro­vides em­ploy­ment for thou­sands of peo­ple in var­i­ous types of busi­ness­es.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ackin, Car­ni­val bands pro­vide di­rect em­ploy­ment to dozens of pro­duc­tion work­ers, cos­tume mak­ers, cos­tume de­sign­ers, bar­tenders, truck dri­vers, food work­ers, DJs , mu­si­cians, sound and light­ing com­pa­nies, graph­ic artistes and pho­tog­ra­phers etc. 

Ackin high­light­ed that Car­ni­val’s eco-sys­tem would be dis­rupt­ed as well, as the fes­ti­val pro­vides in­di­rect earn­ings to com­pli­men­ta­ry ser­vices like air­lines, ho­tels, guests hous­es, taxi dri­vers, food ven­dors, beau­ty ser­vices, tour op­er­a­tors, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, sig­nage print­ers and more. 

Al­so speak­ing to the SBG was band­leader of Kalicha­ran’s Car­ni­val, Aaron Kalicha­ran who com­ment­ed on the im­pact of Car­ni­val’s pos­si­ble can­cel­la­tion: “We are not just think­ing about biki­ni and beads and feath­ers.”

Ac­cord­ing to Kalicha­ran, cash flows to many oth­er busi­ness­es like hard­wares would al­so be ad­verse­ly touched by Car­ni­val’s can­cel­la­tion. Kalicha­ran ar­tic­u­lat­ed: “A lot of peo­ple don’t know, the hard­wares make so much of cash turnover from Car­ni­val.” This is be­cause ply­board, wires and glue are ma­jor sell­ers dur­ing that sea­son. 

Da­ta from a col­lab­o­ra­tive study done by the Cen­tral Bank and the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in­di­cat­ed that Car­ni­val ac­count­ed for 42.5 per cent of the coun­try’s tourism ex­pen­di­ture for 2019. 

Us­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion on tourist ar­rivals for 2019 (479,999) and in­for­ma­tion on the av­er­age dai­ly ex­pen­di­ture for tourists in T&T ($670), it can be es­ti­mat­ed that $322mil­lion was spent in T&T for 2019.

There­fore, with Car­ni­val ac­count­ing for 42.5 per cent of the afore­men­tioned fig­ure, it means that the ex­pen­di­ture for Car­ni­val alone was $136.85 mil­lion for 2019. 

Ackin said that while Car­ni­val is a sea­son­al in­dus­try, many peo­ple de­pend on its sea­son­al in­come to pro­vide for the en­tire year.  He ar­gued: “Where­as the big­ger play­ers may be able to ral­ly through the year with­out in­come, there are many small com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als who will suf­fer fi­nan­cial­ly if Car­ni­val need­ed to be can­celled be­cause of COVID-19.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ackin, a post­pone­ment rather than a can­cel­la­tion would be a bet­ter op­tion. He high­light­ed the fact that any com­pa­ny or per­son with­out in­come for a year would find it dif­fi­cult to sur­vive, as no in­come means the busi­ness­es will not be able to pay their staff and oth­er op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es.

“This will lead to lay­offs and the clos­ing of busi­ness­es who are un­able to with­stand the hard times ahead,” said Ackin. He ad­mit­ted that the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try along with tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty are the hard­est be­ing hit by this pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, more im­me­di­ate loss­es were ex­pe­ri­enced by some band lead­ers as they would have had to can­cel for­eign events. Ackin in­di­cat­ed that his com­pa­ny had to can­cel its “Ig­nite Ja­maica” event and his team is still look­ing on to see what will be be­come of events planned for New York, Lon­don and Mi­a­mi. 

Ackin added: “Lo­cal events that will be af­fect­ed are Jamin Sum­mer which we hold in June, and our sig­na­ture Band Launch, “Fes­ti­val of the Bands” in Ju­ly.”

Mean­while, com­man­der-in-chief of Cae­sar’s Army Jules So­bion said: “For the time be­ing I have can­celled five events.”

So­bion in­di­cat­ed that Cae­sar’s Army had two sched­uled events for Ja­maica’s Car­ni­val, one event in New York that was due in June and an­oth­er in St Lu­cia be­cause its car­ni­val got can­celled. 

The oth­er event is So­bion’s In­de­pen­dence Day event, which has not been out­right can­celled but still ten­ta­tive as Cae­sar’s Army mon­i­tors the de­ci­sions of the gov­ern­ment. 

The loss of op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gi­neer for­eign events have hurt the rev­enues of event spe­cial­ists. So­bion in­di­cat­ed that his events out­side of T&T Car­ni­val con­tribute to 50 per cent of his com­pa­ny’s rev­enue. 

How­ev­er, he re­mains op­ti­mistic as he re­marked: “It (rev­enue) has not been lost - but it has just been re­moved.”  So­bion ar­gued that dur­ing this time com­pa­nies should pre­pare for the worst, ex­pect the best and adapt to what the chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment brings. 

In trav­el­ling from event to event, So­bion in­di­cat­ed that COVID-19’s desta­bil­is­ing force has giv­en him the time to think and eval­u­ate his com­pa­ny. He not­ed that Cae­sar’s Army is based on event pro­duc­tion, event mar­ket­ing and dig­i­tal me­dia and has to now rein­vent it­self by ex­plor­ing oth­er ser­vices that can be pro­vid­ed from a vir­tu­al stand­point. 

So­bion al­so ar­tic­u­lat­ed that the gov­ern­ment’s re-eval­u­a­tion of rev­enue earn­ing in­dus­tries out­side of oil and gas plays a piv­otal role in the midst of COVID-19. He not­ed that the nascent in­dus­tries should be con­sid­ered as the re­build­ing process be­gins post COVID-19. 

The three busi­ness­men not­ed that their plans for T&T Car­ni­val 2021 have been dis­rupt­ed as Tribe planned since 2019 and Kalicha­ran’s plan­ning process would nor­mal­ly be­gin in April for the fol­low­ing year. 

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) will an­nounce by Au­gust if Car­ni­val 2021 would be mov­ing for­ward based on the di­rec­tive of the gov­ern­ment. When asked if an Au­gust an­nounce­ment would give the lead­ers enough to pre­pare—Ackin, So­bion and Kalicha­ran all not­ed, yes. 

Ackin said that af­ter Sep­tem­ber 1, the lead time to get cer­tain things done be­comes a bit slim and full scale pro­duc­tion be­comes hard­er, al­beit not im­pos­si­ble. He not­ed that the group has al­ways done as much pro­duc­tion as it could in Trinidad, but giv­en the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and lo­gis­ti­cal con­straints posed by the coro­n­avirus, it may mean or­der­ing ma­te­ri­als ear­li­er, and do­ing more in Trinidad once the ca­pac­i­ty is avail­able.

He in­di­cat­ed that or­der­ing and plan­ning “with the COVID fac­tor” is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult be­cause of the huge un­cer­tain­ty at­tached. He likened it to try­ing to hit a mov­ing tar­get.

Al­though Kalicha­ran said that he nor­mal­ly gets sup­plies from New York and Chi­na, he can mi­grate to do­ing every­thing in T&T as the scale of his op­er­a­tions are man­age­able and it was done be­fore. 

The band­lead­ers re­marked that above all, the health and safe­ty of all cit­i­zens, pa­trons and mas­quer­ades are pre-em­i­nent and they await the in­struc­tions from the gov­ern­ment and glob­al health bod­ies. 

Ac­cord­ing to Ackin, “the sil­ver lin­ing in all this for the lo­cal and re­gion­al en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try is that once a Vac­cine be­comes avail­able and peo­ple feel safe again, Caribbean peo­ple will bounce back faster than the rest of the world.”

He con­tin­ued: “We are so­cial peo­ple by na­ture and will be in a fête and on the road in a heart­beat!”