Car­ni­val is an im­por­tant rev­enue gen­er­a­tor for many dif­fer­ent sec­tors in this coun­try.

“By its na­ture, the Car­ni­val sea­son gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty across sev­er­al sec­tors in­clud­ing, en­ter­tain­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, me­dia, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­tail, nor­mal­ly pro­vid­ing a boost for the do­mes­tic econ­o­my over a pe­ri­od of at least six weeks,” econ­o­mist and man­ag­er at Re­pub­lic Bank Garvin Joe­field stat­ed in his col­umn, The Ta­ban­ca is Re­al- A look at how a Car­ni­val free year dis­rupt­ed the econ­o­my.

And this was no hy­per­bole as sev­er­al com­pa­nies across var­i­ous sec­tors cit­ed the ab­sence of Car­ni­val last year for loss­es in rev­enue in the first quar­ter of 2021.

Pres­tige Hold­ings record­ed a $56 mil­lion drop in rev­enue for the three months end­ed Feb­ru­ary 28 last year when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2020.

“In com­par­i­son to 2021, our first quar­ter in 2020 oc­curred be­fore the on­set of the ef­fects of the glob­al pan­dem­ic and al­so had the ben­e­fit of Car­ni­val falling with­in that pe­ri­od, which is a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of rev­enue for our com­pa­ny,” Pres­tige’s chair­man Chris­t­ian E Mout­tet stat­ed in his re­port to share­hold­ers.

Pres­tige Hold­ings is a restau­rant man­age­ment com­pa­ny which op­er­ates pop­u­lar brands such as KFC, Piz­za Hut, Star­bucks, and TGI Fri­days.

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny al­so record­ed a fall in rev­enue of $33 mil­lion for the first quar­ter of last year.

“These re­sults re­flect the con­tin­ued im­pact of COVID-19 and the ab­sence of Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” Wit­co’s chair­man An­tho­ny E Phillip stat­ed in his re­view for the pe­ri­od.

Even us here at Guardian Me­dia were not left un­touched by the ab­sence of Car­ni­val.

“Rev­enues for the three months end­ing March 31, 2021 were $22.4 mil­lion, a re­duc­tion of $5.9 mil­lion or 21 per cent ver­sus the same pe­ri­od in the pri­or year. Year-over-year de­cline in rev­enue per­for­mance was due to con­tin­ued im­pact of COVID-19 and re­sult­ing can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val,” the chair­man of Guardian Me­dia Pe­ter Clarke stat­ed in the com­pa­ny’s re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2021.

Ac­cord­ing to a 2014 ar­ti­cle of As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States “rev­enue from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val ex­ceeds on av­er­age US$100 mil­lion.” Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell told the Up­per House on Tues­day that no de­ci­sion has been made about Car­ni­val 2022 as yet.

Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) Grant Tay­lor said while the me­dia has been fi­nan­cial­ly im­pact­ed by the ab­sence of Car­ni­val and the pan­dem­ic it­self, the loss of rev­enue can nev­er com­pare to the loss of life.

“It is not just the loss of Car­ni­val. This pan­dem­ic has hit every­body very hard, the me­dia is no ex­cep­tion to that,” Tay­lor said.

“Safe­ty is al­ways go­ing to be pri­or­i­ty num­ber one I am not go­ing to sec­ond guess the gov­ern­ment on that. Rev­enue will nev­er come be­fore peo­ple’s lives or safe­ty,” he said.

Tay­lor said the TTP­BA has been in­stru­men­tal in cam­paign­ing in var­i­ous ar­eas for peo­ple’s safe­ty with re­gard COVID.

“So we have been part of the cam­paign about mask-wear­ing and hand wash­ing and sani­ti­sa­tion and vac­ci­na­tion aware­ness. We joined with all of the Cham­bers to have aware­ness pro­grammes just to try and keep peo­ple safe,” he said.

While many com­pa­nies were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed fi­nan­cial­ly, for Carib Brew­ery has a dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ence.

Ac­cord­ing to an ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign by Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing the three sad­dest words were “Car­ni­val is can­celled.”

While the five most as­sur­ing words were “Hold on to the Car­ni­val.”

Fol­low­ing the cam­paign Carib who pre­vi­ous­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed a 2.5 de­cline in sales were able to record a 9.8 per cent in­crease.

“Yet look at the in­crease in sales from the pre­vi­ous year be­fore the pan­dem­ic. What was re­spon­si­ble for Carib’s huge in­crease amidst the pan­dem­ic when there was a can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val and bars closed?” Ernie Ross stat­ed.

“We ran a nos­tal­gic cam­paign themed Hold on to the Car­ni­val. It was all about iden­ti­fy­ing the in­tan­gi­ble val­ue of the brew and its as­so­ci­a­tion with the Car­ni­val rev­el­ry and lime. Against the grain of all the neg­a­tiv­i­ty and clo­sures we de­ployed the In­tang­ien­ce brand­ing method­ol­o­gy of in­tan­gi­ble val­ues and the sci­ence of hu­man con­nec­tion to de­liv­er re­sults that de­fied the pre­vail­ing mar­ket cir­cum­stances,” he stat­ed.

Ross said this was an ex­am­ple of how ad­ver­si­ty can be turned in­to op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“It was based up­on the prin­ci­ple that Car­ni­val couldn’t be re­al­ly can­celled as it would live with­in each of us no mat­ter what. ‘Hold on to the Car­ni­val’ went vi­ral overnight and res­onat­ed to the ex­tent seen in the over­whelm­ing sales fig­ures as con­sumers went out and emo­tion­al­ly in­vest­ed in the brew,” he said.

Ross said this year Carib will per­sist with its surge of op­ti­mism and cel­e­bra­tion of a fes­ti­val that can nev­er leave us.

“If last year is any­thing to go by, the re­sponse will car­ry far be­yond the emp­ty streets to fill the hearts and minds of a pub­lic that is al­ways ready to cel­e­brate life. In this way we can be as­sured the Car­ni­val lives on with­in us,” Ross said.