While ex­cite­ment for To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val is grow­ing, stake­hold­ers have recog­nised the is­land would have to make a sig­nif­i­cant first im­pres­sion to build the event’s rep­u­ta­tion.

Af­ter months of si­lence, fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in Au­gust, the events at­tached to the is­land’s first-ever Car­ni­val are be­ing re­vealed rapid­ly.

The Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort has joined the list as the ho­tel an­nounced En­chant­ed, an All In­clu­sive fete is set to be held on Sat­ur­day, Oc­to­ber 29.

The par­ty is set to be held at the ocean front area of the ho­tel, with its restau­rants pro­vid­ing the meals dur­ing the event.

How­ev­er, Mag­dale­na Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Vin­od Ba­jaj ex­plained the ho­tel did not want to sim­ply host an event to cap­i­talise on the buzz of the new­ly an­nounced To­ba­go Car­ni­val but to cre­ate an event that will be­come a stand­out on the cal­en­dar, akin to pop­u­lar Car­ni­val Fetes such as Hy­att Lime.

“We’ve been plan­ning for over six to nine months. My en­tire sales team and the op­er­a­tion team we’ve been plan­ning to work on small de­tails. You know we are very de­tail-ori­ent­ed, we are not leav­ing any­thing out we want to make sure every­thing is tak­en care of from the pa­tron’s ar­rival, that ex­pe­ri­ence when they ar­rive, how they will ar­rive. Every de­tail that we think of, small de­tails you can imag­ine will be tak­en care of,” said Ba­jaj who said the team recog­nised that it was cru­cial.

This fu­elled the plan­ning of the event whilst most were wait­ing on the an­nounce­ment from the THA.

“The THA, they don’t have any his­to­ry of host­ing a Car­ni­val. This is new to every­one in­clud­ing them. We have no da­ta where we can look back at what we did or how we did it. This is some­thing we got to cre­ate from scratch. This is what makes it so ex­cit­ing. So in­cred­i­ble, that we can de­vel­op new stan­dards, very high new stan­dards,” said Ba­jaj “and this will de­vel­op for the fu­ture.”

Ba­jaj ex­plained that his team had been plan­ning for more than half of the year, but up­on re­al­is­ing the mag­ni­tude of the event and its po­ten­tial im­por­tance to the tourism sec­tor, the Mag­dale­na team reached out to an ex­pe­ri­enced fig­ure with­in the busi­ness, Randy Glas­gow.

“Ini­tial­ly, we had been try­ing to do it our­selves, as you know we do quite a few pool­side events with the dif­fer­ent (or­gan­is­ers). So we had been plan­ning our­selves for quite a while so when the Car­ni­val was an­nounced by the THA we jumped in quick­ly, and we start­ed plan­ning, then we al­so re­alised we don’t have the ex­per­tise, maybe op­er­a­tional ex­per­tise,” Ba­jaj said con­cern­ing the de­ci­sion to turn to Glas­gow with whom he had shared a pos­i­tive work­ing re­la­tion­ship for six years.

Glas­gow agreed that the event need­ed to be­come a land­mark in the To­ba­go cal­en­dar and was thank­ful the ho­tel and its board had the fore­sight to recog­nise the po­ten­tial of de­vel­op­ing such an event.

“Hav­ing a Car­ni­val for the first time in a mar­ket like To­ba­go needs the ma­jor play­ers with­in the tourism sec­tor and oth­er sec­tors to come for­ward to show their hand. We have to give thanks to the Eteck board, the Mag­dale­na man­age­ment for putting your hands up first of all, for sup­port­ing the To­ba­go Car­ni­val ini­tia­tive,” said Glas­gow, “The word is out that Mag­dale­na is hav­ing an all-in­clu­sive for To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val and it takes the Car­ni­val to an­oth­er lev­el. We are de­light­ed to be part of this be­cause it’s the first one,” he said.

“It was an easy, easy de­ci­sion to join forces, with Mr Vin­od (Ba­jaj) and the ho­tel to do some­thing re­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar. And we look for­ward to it very much. Our team is ex­cit­ed. We know the times are tough, and we’re go­ing to work hard, we’re go­ing to work smart. The first ini­tia­tive will be to make sure we pack all the ho­tel with guests for that Car­ni­val week­end,” he said, “So while it’s im­por­tant for the ho­tels, to do their busi­ness and so forth, I think they (the ho­tels) will more be dri­ven by mak­ing their con­tri­bu­tion to the is­land of To­ba­go by en­dors­ing and im­prov­ing the up­com­ing Car­ni­val.”

Glas­gow not­ed that his ex­per­tise was re­quired, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the high in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand for so­ca stars cur­rent­ly, as, in re­cent months, so­ca artistes have been booked for events at Labour Day in New York, Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val in Lon­don, Carib­ana in Toron­to and DC’s Car­ni­val as well as var­i­ous re­cent re­gion­al Car­ni­vals, mak­ing the mar­ket high­ly com­pet­i­tive at the mo­ment.

“It takes some do­ing to get good artists be­cause since COVID every­body wants to par­ty, en­joy the mu­sic, so what hap­pened at Bar­clays cen­tre with Machel, a sold-out crowd 19 thou­sand peo­ple out­side of the Caribbean at­tend­ed the event, I mean that is phe­nom­e­nal. For peo­ple, the ap­petite is there for good en­ter­tain­ment and world-class en­ter­tain­ment. So and it takes some do­ing be­cause you wouldn’t be­lieve in our quest to get the best. There are quite a num­ber of events out­side of the Caribbean, Unit­ed States where our ma­jor artistes are in high de­mand,” said Glas­gow.

He ex­plained that while some had reser­va­tions about the THA’s rel­a­tive si­lence since it was ini­tial­ly an­nounced in April, un­til the dates and sched­ule were re­vealed in Au­gust, the En­chant­ed team had no doubt that the Car­ni­val would hap­pen and re­mained fo­cused on se­cur­ing top tal­ent for the event.

“We were con­fi­dent that once the ho­n­ourable Chief Sec­re­tary an­nounced that the Car­ni­val is on. We knew we had to be pa­tient and work dili­gent­ly and we have been do­ing that since, talk­ing to a num­ber of artists be­cause we think it’s im­por­tant to have a good en­ter­tain­ment cast, for any good all-in­clu­sive you look at the Hy­att Lime you look at St Mary’s Col­lege, all-in­clu­sive, it’s dri­ven by top en­ter­tain­ment,” said Glas­gow.

The dress code for the event is fash­ion­ably white, as the event’s or­gan­is­ers want to cre­ate a pic­ture that will fur­ther pro­mote To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val.