Pe­ter Christo­pher

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

KEY POINTS

* Band­lead­ers say ear­ly signs of high de­mand for Car­ni­val 2023

* Cost of cos­tumes to go up as in­fla­tion im­pacts fes­ti­val

* Wor­ry about the amount of air­lift avail­able to get to T&T

* Find­ing a room could prove dif­fi­cult for some as ho­tels al­most full

The side­walks of Ari­api­ta Av­enue are lined with peo­ple sip­ping on their pre­ferred or avail­able bev­er­ages.

Mu­sic trucks blast so­ca mu­sic to make the crowd dance and sway as they await Tribe’s Sun­set The­atre pre­sen­ta­tion at Adam Smith Square.

It is a true im­age of Car­ni­val, but that was the scene on Fri­day as the band kicked off its band launch week­end.

Af­ter two years with­out a prop­er reign of the Mer­ry Monarch, Tribe’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Dean Ackin is ex­pec­tant of a tru­ly great Car­ni­val 2023 based on the ear­ly in­di­ca­tors.

“I think it’s go­ing to be a bumper Car­ni­val,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian. To­wards the end of the taste of Car­ni­val held ear­li­er this year, the mas band test­ed just how hun­gry their fol­low­ers were for a prop­er Car­ni­val. Their pa­trons were ea­ger to or­der.

“Car­ni­val Tues­day ear­li­er this year, 2022, still dur­ing COVID, what we did to test the tem­per­a­ture was we did a sur­prise or reg­is­tra­tion to our mas­quer­aders. We would have sent out an email on car­ni­val Tues­day 2022 telling them, lis­ten if they’re in­ter­est­ed in our Car­ni­val 2023, book a spot. And based on that I could see that there’s a very high lev­el of an­tic­i­pa­tion and the de­mand is high for Car­ni­val 2023. Be­cause a num­ber of peo­ple would have reg­is­tered and booked their spot back then. We would have giv­en them 24 hours and it was a lit­tle but fren­zy at that point in time,” he said.

The band launch pe­ri­od has been sim­i­lar­ly fre­net­ic. Apart from Fri­day’s event the re­sponse to the oth­er events billed as part of Tribe’s Sun­set week­end has al­so been very en­cour­ag­ing.

“Based on tick­et sales for the events over the week­end, even the free event that we have on this Sat­ur­day morn­ing Sun Sweat, which is a So­ca fit­ness event, where you have to reg­is­ter. It is over­sub­scribed,” he said.

He ex­plained that he felt this was par­tial­ly due to the pan­dem­ic, as it had built a de­sire to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing like Car­ni­val.

“I think peo­ple want to get back out. They want to en­joy life again. You know, they want to have fun. They want that es­cape. And yeah, Car­ni­val is bring­ing that to them. So if I was to say based on this week­end and based on the feed­back, based on the de­mand for the tick­et sales you know, on the reg­is­tra­tion for Sun sweat, etc Yeah, I would say Car­ni­val 2023 looks pret­ty, pret­ty good,” he said.

Band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh has al­so seen sim­i­lar de­mand for his band Ron­nie and Caro.

“The ex­cite­ment is there, the ex­cite­ment has been there since the an­nounce­ment was made. So our so­cial me­dia pages were all ex­cite­ment (from pa­trons). We have had a pro­mo­tion called ‘book your spot’ where peo­ple could have made a slight down­pay­ment in ad­vance to book their spot for 2023 and that was quite suc­cess­ful. We had a lot of peo­ple book­ing their spot to make sure they get the sec­tion of their choice ba­si­cal­ly. So, the ex­cite­ment is build­ing, es­pe­cial­ly from abroad,” said the two-time for­mer So­ca Monarch, who not­ed that there were oth­er in­di­ca­tions that Car­ni­val 2023 is a hot tick­et cur­rent­ly.

“If you check the ho­tels they will tell you that things are al­ready tight now,” he said, “So if the hote­liers can say the book­ings al­ready tight, you know those are the ones who play the mas, those are the ones who par­tic­i­pate in the Car­ni­val in terms of play­ing mas.”

He al­so not­ed that oth­er in­dus­tries con­nect­ed to Car­ni­val are now scram­bling to en­sure that they have their af­fairs in or­der to cater to the ex­pect­ed de­mand.

McIn­tosh said, “So when you hear the ho­tels book out and then the car rentals hav­ing a prob­lem too be­cause in the pan­dem­ic they were forced to sell off of their ve­hi­cles on their fleet. Now that the de­mand is back they have to find mon­ey to buy new ve­hi­cles to in­crease their fleet. So as long as those peo­ple bub­bling so to speak, then you know de­mand bub­bling. So the ex­cite­ment is def­i­nite­ly there.”

“Yes! It’s been two years since our last Car­ni­val, so there is height­ened ex­cite­ment and an­tic­i­pa­tion to wear a cos­tume and to pa­rade the streets,” Tanya Gomes, YU­MA’s di­rec­tor told the Busi­ness Guardian. She ex­plained that like Tribe and Ron­nie and Caro, their pre-reg­is­tra­tion was high­ly suc­cess­ful.

“It’s a pro­gramme we start­ed in 2020. For this up­com­ing Car­ni­val, the pre-reg­is­tra­tion num­bers tripled what we had in 2020,” said Gomes,”(The re­sponse has been) ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive. Our Yu­mans know what they want, and they have not stopped reg­is­ter­ing. We are very grate­ful.”

She said there has been a con­tin­u­ous buzz since it was made clear that Car­ni­val would be back.

“There aren’t words to de­scribe the lev­el of ex­cite­ment among the team. We’re on lev­el 1000%,” she said.

But amid the ex­cite­ment, Ackin is still rel­a­tive­ly cau­tious, as there is still a long way to go be­fore Car­ni­val 2023 kicks off.

He ex­plained that as the bands pre­pare for the event, there are faced with sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges that were cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic.

“I don’t like to count my chick­ens be­fore they hatch. So I’m still al­ways cau­tious. There are a num­ber of things that have changed with COVID. The sup­ply chain is­sues that are be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced world­wide. The hy­per­in­fla­tion. I call it hy­per­in­fla­tion be­cause every week prices are chang­ing in the last cou­ple of weeks, right. And we have to price of prod­uct now to de­liv­er in six or sev­en months times and we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing that with our sup­pli­ers right now for ma­te­ri­als,” he said.

The Tribe band­leader said the band is work­ing to en­sure their prod­uct is in no way com­pro­mised as a re­sult of these is­sues, but it has left the band with a bit of a bal­anc­ing act.

“One week the prices is a cer­tain thing, a cer­tain price, and then next week, there’s like a slight change. So that is go­ing to be a chal­lenge for us. You know, it would have been caused by the pan­dem­ic and then fol­lowed up by the war. So we have chal­lenges it’s not gonna be easy, we try­ing to keep the prod­uct af­ford­able. But you know, it’s a lot that we of­fer or the ex­pe­ri­ences , we al­ways say, I al­ways say we sell an ex­pe­ri­ence. The cos­tume is com­pli­men­ta­ry,” he said,.

“The point is that there’s a lot that goes in­to cre­at­ing that ex­pe­ri­ence and every el­e­ment or every facet of that ex­pe­ri­ence has a cost to it. so our ac­count­ing de­part­ment right now is the busiest de­part­ment try­ing to fig­ure out what it would look like you know.”

He al­so not­ed that the coun­try would need to pro­vide ac­com­mo­da­tion to match the high de­mand.

“But as usu­al, the thing is ac­com­mo­da­tion and flights are usu­al­ly what re­stricts the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try. So as much as they may be a great de­mand, can we ac­com­mo­date them would be the ques­tion, you know, that’d be coun­try,” he said.

But based on the re­ac­tion to the week­end so far, Car­ni­val 2023’s an­tic­i­pa­tion is tru­ly pal­pa­ble.