The heart­beat of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture, Car­ni­val 2025 is on track to be a record-break­ing cel­e­bra­tion, with an ex­pect­ed tripling of the num­ber of vis­i­tor ar­rivals which will re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture and eco­nom­ic boost for this coun­try, says Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell.

In shar­ing in­sights with the Busi­ness Guardian, the min­is­ter de­tailed that with an an­tic­i­pat­ed surge in vis­i­tor ar­rivals, in­creased air­craft fre­quen­cy, ful­ly booked ho­tels, and an ex­pand­ed line­up of events, this year’s reign of the Mer­ry Monarch, less than a month away, promis­es to “sur­pass all ex­pec­ta­tions.”

He not­ed Car­ni­val 2024 wel­comed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 41,444 vis­i­tors by air, in­clud­ing 29,651 non-na­tion­als and 11,793 na­tion­als re­sid­ing abroad.

How­ev­er, for Car­ni­val 2025, the Tourism Min­is­ter said pro­jec­tions in­di­cate a sig­nif­i­cant rise in ar­rivals stat­ing “the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go es­ti­mates that be­tween Feb­ru­ary 1 and March 14, 158,897 vis­i­tors will ar­rive. This growth high­lights the fes­ti­val’s grow­ing ap­peal and in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion.”

More vis­i­tors would al­so ob­vi­ous­ly equate to an in­crease in vis­i­tor spend.

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture for Car­ni­val 2024 was es­ti­mat­ed at US$94.2 mil­lion (TT$640 mil­lion), cov­er­ing food, en­ter­tain­ment, ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­port, and oth­er ex­pens­es.

“Giv­en the ex­pect­ed in­crease in ar­rivals for Car­ni­val 2025, vis­i­tor spend­ing is an­tic­i­pat­ed to rise, fur­ther stim­u­lat­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my and cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es,” Mitchell said, adding that this year’s fig­ure is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er.

An in­crease in air­craft fre­quen­cy is al­so ex­pect­ed.

Mitchell said with more vis­i­tors flock­ing to Trinidad for these fes­tiv­i­ties, the es­ti­mat­ed num­ber of air­craft ar­rivals for the same pe­ri­od in 2025 stands at 1,759, com­pared to 1,350 in 2024.

He out­lined fre­quent flights from ma­jor air­lines, in­clud­ing Amer­i­can Air­lines, British Air­ways, Caribbean Air­lines, Co­pa Air­lines, Fron­tier Air­lines, Jet­Blue, KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines, Li­at2020, and Unit­ed Air­lines, will as­sist in ac­com­mo­dat­ing the surge in de­mand while pro­vid­ing greater flex­i­bil­i­ty for trav­ellers and con­tribut­ing to the over­all ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and suc­cess of the sea­son.

Mitchell fur­ther out­lined the out­look for ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy which he said is al­so ex­pect­ed to be at max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty.

“Trinidad’s ho­tels are al­ready re­port­ing full oc­cu­pan­cy for Car­ni­val 2025, high­light­ing the un­prece­dent­ed de­mand for ac­com­mo­da­tion. This uptick in book­ings ben­e­fits not on­ly the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor but al­so boosts lo­cal em­ploy­ment as staffing lev­els rise to ac­com­mo­date the in­flux of guests,” he said.

Be­yond ho­tels, he added the broad­er econ­o­my is set to thrive, with in­creased busi­ness in sec­tors such as trans­porta­tion, re­tail, and food ser­vices, not­ing that taxis, car rentals, cos­tume sales, and lo­cal fash­ion all stand to see sub­stan­tial in­creas­es in de­mand.

Rise in Car­ni­val events

De­spite the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties re­main un­af­fect­ed, with a no­table in­crease in the num­ber of events.

In 2025, be­tween 300 to 400 fetes are sched­uled, sur­pass­ing last year’s count, which pro­mot­ers said saw around 200 or less such events giv­en the short­er sea­son.

This ex­pan­sion, Mitchell said of­fers more en­ter­tain­ment op­tions for rev­ellers and fu­els sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty across the en­ter­tain­ment and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­tries as he added that pa­trons have al­ready re­port­ed a “thrilling and en­joy­able fete sea­son, with many ex­press­ing ex­cite­ments over the va­ri­ety and qual­i­ty of events be­ing host­ed.”

More­over, he said Car­ni­val band­lead­ers re­main op­ti­mistic about sales for 2025, re­port­ing strong de­mand. de­spite ini­tial con­cerns.

“The state of emer­gency has not slowed cos­tume sales or pa­rade par­tic­i­pa­tion, as reg­is­tra­tions con­tin­ue at a steady pace. In fact, sev­er­al band sec­tions are al­ready sold out, and band­lead­ers say in­ter­est keeps grow­ing,” Mitchell said.

Checks with ma­jor bands like Tribe echoed these sen­ti­ments as they in­di­cat­ed that since last year their sec­tions have all been sold out.

Cruise ship re­turns

Cruise tourism al­so con­tin­ues to play a vi­tal role in the Car­ni­val sea­son.

Mitchell said be­tween Feb­ru­ary and March 2025, Trinidad ex­pects five cruise ship calls to the port of Port-of-Spain, em­pha­sis­ing that this will al­so bring an in­flux of vis­i­tors. He said these pas­sen­gers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­merse them­selves in the of­fer­ings at the John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain which of­fi­cial­ly opens on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2025.

The Tourism Min­is­ter added that a ma­jor high­light of the sea­son is the re­turn of the Epic Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence, host­ed aboard Roy­al Caribbean’s Rhap­sody of the Seas.

“Over 2,000 pas­sen­gers are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this six-day cel­e­bra­tion from Feb­ru­ary 28 to March 5, 2025. Fea­tur­ing on-deck par­ties with top re­gion­al and lo­cal per­form­ers, pre­mi­um ac­com­mo­da­tions, and ac­cess to the best Car­ni­val events and at­trac­tions,” he said.

Fur­ther, Mitchell added that the Epic Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence is back in 2025 sail­ing from Puer­to Ri­co to Port-of-Spain and dock­ing for five days.

In 2023, the Epic Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence gen­er­at­ed over US$1.8 mil­lion in rev­enue, with more than US$700,000 com­ing from the sale of cos­tumes, priced at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$850 each.

Ad­di­tion­al rev­enue streams were gen­er­at­ed through Car­ni­val fetes, port dock­age charges, and bunker­ing ser­vices.

This year, the ex­pect­ed con­tin­ued suc­cess of the Epic Car­ni­val Ex­pe­ri­ence 2025 means fur­ther eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for T&T.

A promis­ing sea­son

Ex­press­ing his ex­cite­ment not­ing that 2025 is set to be a record-break­ing year Mitchell said, “Car­ni­val is an in­te­gral part of our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. With pro­jec­tions of in­creased vis­i­tor ar­rivals, we an­tic­i­pate a sig­nif­i­cant boost in vis­i­tor spend, which will have a pos­i­tive rip­ple ef­fect across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, from hos­pi­tal­i­ty to trans­porta­tion and re­tail. The ex­pect­ed surge in tourism and spend­ing will con­tin­ue to po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as the pre­mier Car­ni­val des­ti­na­tion, at­tract­ing glob­al at­ten­tion and strength­en­ing our econ­o­my.”

He al­so point­ed out that the grow­ing num­ber of vis­i­tors and their in­creased spend­ing will cre­ate valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal busi­ness­es, ar­ti­sans, and ser­vice providers, fur­ther en­hanc­ing the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val.

With care­ful plan­ning and con­tin­ued sup­port for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs, Mitchell main­tained that the gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that Car­ni­val 2025 re­mains a world-class cel­e­bra­tion that ben­e­fits all.

He al­so as­sured that as T&T pre­pares for one of its most an­tic­i­pat­ed cul­tur­al events, the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts has put all nec­es­sary mea­sures in place for a safe en­vi­ron­ment.

See ta­ble

Es­ti­mat­ed Pas­sen­ger Ar­rivals be­tween Feb 1 and March 14, 2025.