Yes­ter­day’s T&T Guardian lead sto­ry which high­light­ed that the high cost of air­fare and ac­com­mo­da­tion has dis­cour­aged some vis­i­tors from par­tic­i­pat­ing in Trinidad’s 2024 Car­ni­val, is a charge that all stake­hold­ers in one of this coun­try’s pre­mier tourist at­trac­tions must take very se­ri­ous­ly.

“I think we are out­pric­ing our­selves. I think we are mak­ing our Car­ni­val the most ex­pen­sive one to at­tend, so we need to be care­ful about that,” said band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh, as he blunt­ly and suc­cinct­ly out­lined the prob­lem.

Tanya Gomes, the co-di­rec­tor of Yu­ma, one of Trinidad’s largest mas bands, added, “Our Car­ni­val is cer­tain­ly very ex­pen­sive when it comes to ac­com­mo­da­tion, flights and trans­porta­tion.”

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) es­ti­mates that 27,375 peo­ple vis­it­ed T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the fes­tiv­i­ties in 2023. It is es­ti­mat­ed that they spent a to­tal of $419.19 mil­lion (US$61.64 mil­lion).

While that mon­ey pales in com­par­i­son to the rev­enues gen­er­at­ed from the sale of T&T’s nat­ur­al gas, oil and petro­chem­i­cals, much of the Car­ni­val spend goes di­rect­ly in­to the hands of the taxi dri­vers, ven­dors of all kinds of prod­ucts, as well as the or­gan­is­ers of the all-in­clu­sive events, Car­ni­val bands, ho­tels, guest hous­es and oth­er types of ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

The CSO al­so does an an­nu­al sur­vey of de­part­ing pas­sen­gers start­ing on Ash Wednes­day, to gauge the ex­pen­di­ture of Car­ni­val vis­i­tors and the length of time they stayed.

The 2023 sur­vey re­ceived re­spons­es from a to­tal of 2,350 vis­i­tors, who dis­closed that they spent a to­tal of $35.98 mil­lion (US$5.29 mil­lion) over an av­er­age length of stay of 13 days with av­er­age ex­pen­di­ture over that pe­ri­od of $15,313 (US$2,251).

Of the $35.98 mil­lion spent by the re­spon­dents to the 2023 Car­ni­val vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture sur­vey, the CSO es­ti­mates that about 50 per cent was spent on ‘en­ter­tain­ment’ and 30 per cent on ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals.

T&T Car­ni­val pro­vides eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies through­out the length and breadth of this coun­try.

Few­er Car­ni­val vis­i­tors, com­pris­ing both tourists and re­turn­ing na­tion­als, means a re­duc­tion in the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and less for­eign ex­change be­ing earned dur­ing the pre-Lenten fes­ti­val, at a time when the de­mand for for­eign ex­change has out­stripped its sup­ply for more than ten years.

The pri­vate sec­tor in T&T, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment, should be push­ing the fes­ti­val tourism en­ve­lope as hard as pos­si­ble to gen­er­ate more for­eign ex­change. This is some­thing that T&T can learn from our Caribbean neigh­bours, who have rum and food fes­ti­vals, mu­sic fes­ti­vals, as well as their an­nu­al car­ni­val events - with even Ja­maica mak­ing a se­ri­ous push with their own fes­ti­val, though rel­a­tive­ly new to the in­ter­na­tion­al tourism cal­en­dar.

Giv­en the prox­im­i­ty to the 2024 Car­ni­val, it may be too late to ad­dress the is­sues raised by the band­lead­ers that high air­fares have re­duced the num­ber of vis­i­tors this year.

But this is an is­sue that re­quires se­ri­ous ven­ti­la­tion by the Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers when they sit to do their post mortems of the fes­ti­val af­ter Ash Wednes­day.

Tribe’s brand man­ag­er Rhi­an­non Pem­ber­ton sug­gest­ed on Tues­day that band­lead­ers were “very open” to dis­cus­sions with oth­er stake­hold­ers to make Car­ni­val more af­ford­able.

This sug­gests that the band­lead­ers have not held post-Car­ni­val dis­cus­sions with the air­lines, a point em­pha­sised by McIn­tosh.

For the good of T&T’s Car­ni­val, and its rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties, this ap­par­ent frac­tion­al­ism be­tween and among the fes­ti­val’s stake­hold­ers must end im­me­di­ate­ly.