As geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the Unit­ed States re­ver­ber­ate across the Caribbean, the cruise sec­tor, of­ten treat­ed as a barom­e­ter of in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence, has been forced in­to a pe­ri­od of height­ened un­cer­tain­ty. For this coun­try, the stakes are par­tic­u­lar­ly high, as Car­ni­val is not on­ly po­si­tioned as a cul­tur­al flag­ship but al­so as a crit­i­cal for­eign ex­change earn­er at a time of per­sis­tent eco­nom­ic pres­sure.

At the cen­tre of this mo­ment is Epic Car­ni­val Cruise, op­er­at­ed by Epic Events and its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Jonathan Mack, a Trinidad-born en­tre­pre­neur, who of­fers a pre­mi­um all-in­clu­sive “float­ing ho­tel” con­cept that brings thou­sands of cruise-ship tourists to en­joy the an­nu­al Trinidad Car­ni­val.

In Feb­ru­ary 2026, Roy­al Caribbean’s Bril­liance of the Seas, which Mack leased, is sched­uled to de­part Puer­to Ri­co on Feb­ru­ary 11 and ar­rive at the Port of Port of Spain on Feb­ru­ary 13. The project, now in its third year, has be­come one of the most close­ly watched pri­vate-sec­tor tourism ini­tia­tives in the coun­try.

Mack told Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment is one where de­mand fun­da­men­tals re­main strong, but con­fi­dence has been shak­en by in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines rather than lo­cal re­al­i­ties. From ear­ly 2025, book­ings for the 2026 sail­ing were track­ing well ahead of those for pre­vi­ous years, con­tin­u­ing a trend that had seen Epic Car­ni­val sell out its ca­pac­i­ty in 2025. That tra­jec­to­ry changed abrupt­ly as re­ports of mil­i­tary es­ca­la­tion in and around Venezuela dom­i­nat­ed glob­al news cy­cles.

“We were trend­ing to­wards hav­ing a greater ca­pac­i­ty than we ever had and then all of a sud­den sales stopped com­plete­ly,” Mack ex­plained, point­ing to a sharp in­flec­tion fol­low­ing the start of hos­til­i­ties. The con­cern, he not­ed, was not root­ed in any in­ci­dent in T&T it­self.

Mack out­lined that prospec­tive pas­sen­gers, many of whom have no per­son­al con­nec­tion to T&T, be­gan re­ceiv­ing alerts and trav­el warn­ings from in­ter­na­tion­al sources, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions linked to the Unit­ed States em­bassy net­work. For an au­di­ence un­fa­mil­iar with the ge­og­ra­phy and po­lit­i­cal dis­tinc­tions of the south­ern Caribbean, the ef­fect has been to con­flate re­gion­al ten­sion with lo­cal risk.

“These are for­eign­ers who want to ex­pe­ri­ence the cul­ture. They are look­ing at world news, and they are not speak­ing to some­body in Trinidad who can say, ‘life is nor­mal, Car­ni­val is hap­pen­ing’,” he said. “They see Venezuela, they see the Caribbean on a map, and that cre­ates fear.”

The cruise mod­el that Epic op­er­ates is de­signed pre­cise­ly to over­come long-stand­ing struc­tur­al con­straints in T&T’s tourism sec­tor. Un­like many re­gion­al peers, the coun­try does not have the year-round ho­tel ca­pac­i­ty to ab­sorb large spikes in vis­i­tor ar­rivals. Es­ti­mates place avail­able rooms dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods at be­tween 2,500 and 3,000, far be­low what would be re­quired to ma­te­ri­al­ly scale Car­ni­val tourism through tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion.

The cruise ship, Mack ar­gues, func­tions as a float­ing in­fra­struc­ture bring­ing vis­i­tors, ac­com­mo­da­tion, and con­trolled lo­gis­tics in a sin­gle as­set with­out re­quir­ing bil­lions in fixed cap­i­tal in­vest­ment ashore.

“It doesn’t make sense to build five thou­sand ho­tel rooms when the de­mand is on­ly there for a few weeks of the year,” he not­ed. “It does make sense to bring a cruise line.”

That log­ic has al­ready trans­lat­ed in­to mea­sur­able eco­nom­ic im­pact. Epic Car­ni­val Cruise in­jects ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$5 mil­lion in­to the T&T econ­o­my per Car­ni­val sea­son, based on track­able and ver­i­fi­able spend­ing. Since launch­ing op­er­a­tions in 2023, the cu­mu­la­tive in­jec­tion stands at rough­ly US$9 mil­lion, de­rived from pas­sen­ger spend­ing on ac­com­mo­da­tion ex­ten­sions, food and bev­er­age, trans­port, en­ter­tain­ment, cos­tumes, and an­cil­lary ser­vices.

Mack is care­ful to em­pha­sise that these fig­ures un­der­state the true im­pact.

“That’s what we can ac­tu­al­ly track. We know more mon­ey comes in, but we on­ly use what can be ver­i­fied,” he ex­plained. In an econ­o­my where for­eign ex­change short­ages have be­come a re­cur­ring con­cern, the in­flow of US dol­lars tied di­rect­ly to leisure con­sump­tion is not in­signif­i­cant.

De­spite this, the cur­rent slow­down in book­ings has ex­posed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that ex­tend be­yond Epic it­self. Mack has re­peat­ed­ly called for clear, co­or­di­nat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion from pub­lic au­thor­i­ties con­firm­ing that Car­ni­val 2026 is pro­ceed­ing as planned and that T&T re­mains open for busi­ness. To date, he re­ports re­ceiv­ing no for­mal re­sponse from the Min­istry of Trade and Tourism, the Min­istry of Cul­ture or Trinidad Tourism Ltd, de­spite mul­ti­ple out­reach at­tempts.

“What we’re deal­ing with right now is un­cer­tain­ty,” he said. “Peo­ple are email­ing ask­ing if Car­ni­val is hap­pen­ing, what hap­pens if it’s can­celled, and what hap­pens if the ship route changes. We are an­swer­ing as best as we can, but we’re by­standers look­ing on­ward as well.”

The is­sue is com­pound­ed by re­cent his­to­ry. T&T has op­er­at­ed un­der a state of emer­gency dur­ing con­sec­u­tive Car­ni­val sea­sons, a fact that con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late in­ter­na­tion­al­ly even as it fades from lo­cal con­scious­ness. For for­eign con­sumers, Mack ar­gues, the dis­tinc­tion be­tween le­gal frame­works and lived re­al­i­ty is of­ten lost.

“No one’s talk­ing about the state of emer­gency on the ground right now, but that’s not what the con­sumer sees,” he said. “They see head­lines.”

From an in­dus­try per­spec­tive, the sit­u­a­tion re­mains flu­id rather than cat­a­stroph­ic. Charles Car­val­ho, co-founder of the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, in­di­cat­ed that while the wider trav­el sec­tor is mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments close­ly, cruise op­er­a­tions have so far re­mained in­tact.

“In terms of the cruise in­dus­try, we have not been af­fect­ed,” Car­val­ho ex­plained. “All of our cruise ships are re­main­ing on stream. We have not had any can­cel­la­tions, and we are hop­ing it stays that way.”

He added that in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners con­tin­ues, in­clud­ing new ap­proach­es from trav­el agents and tour op­er­a­tors ex­plor­ing T&T as a des­ti­na­tion. Ma­jor cruise brands have al­so main­tained or ex­pand­ed their en­gage­ment, with Car­ni­val Cruise Lines, MSC Cruis­es, and Marel­la Cruis­es part of the Roy­al Caribbean Group sig­nalling de­ploy­ment plans ex­tend­ing as far as 2031.

Car­val­ho ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal cli­mate re­quires con­stant re­assess­ment. “It’s go­ing to be a day-to-day mon­i­tor­ing sit­u­a­tion,” he said. “It all de­pends on who says what, when, and where.”

The re­gion­al con­text un­der­scores how quick­ly ex­ter­nal shocks can trans­late in­to eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion. In Bar­ba­dos, last week­end’s US mil­i­tary ac­tions trig­gered Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion air­space re­stric­tions that re­sult­ed in at least 13 in­bound flight can­cel­la­tions, af­fect­ing car­ri­ers such as Jet­Blue, Delta Air Lines, Unit­ed Air­lines, and KLM. Cruise-re­lat­ed home­port­ing op­er­a­tions were al­so dis­rupt­ed, il­lus­trat­ing the fragili­ty of tourism lo­gis­tics in mo­ments of cri­sis.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley framed those events not on­ly as an eco­nom­ic is­sue but as a chal­lenge to re­gion­al sov­er­eign­ty, re­it­er­at­ing the Caribbean’s long-stand­ing po­si­tion as a “zone of peace” and cau­tion­ing against uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tary ac­tion. Her in­ter­ven­tion high­light­ed the de­gree to which small, tourism-de­pen­dent states re­main ex­posed to de­ci­sions tak­en far be­yond their bor­ders.

For T&T, the ques­tion is how ef­fec­tive­ly pub­lic and pri­vate stake­hold­ers can work to­geth­er to man­age per­cep­tion and pro­tect rev­enue dur­ing peak earn­ing pe­ri­ods.

Epic’s strat­e­gy, by con­trast, is ex­plic­it­ly long-term. The com­pa­ny has low­ered con­sumer prices in an­tic­i­pa­tion of pub­lic-sec­tor sup­port, rein­vest­ing rev­enue in­to brand-build­ing rather than short-term prof­it. “This is a five-year, ten-year busi­ness mod­el,” Mack ex­plained. “We are build­ing in­fra­struc­ture and build­ing Trinidad as a des­ti­na­tion for the world’s great­est show.”

Whether that vi­sion can with­stand pro­longed un­cer­tain­ty may de­pend less on geopol­i­tics and more on co­or­di­na­tion at home. As the Bril­liance of the Seas pre­pares for its Feb­ru­ary 2026 ar­rival, the cruise it­self re­mains on sched­ule. The broad­er chal­lenge is en­sur­ing that con­fi­dence among trav­ellers, part­ners, and in­vestors ar­rives with it.