GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to at­tract grow­ing num­bers of re­gion­al and di­as­po­ra vis­i­tors while de­liv­er­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for the is­land, but there re­mains room to strength­en the fes­ti­val’s dis­tinct­ly To­bag­on­ian char­ac­ter, says head of UWI St Au­gus­tine’s De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts (DC­FA) Dr Jo-Anne Tull.

Re­flect­ing on this year’s just con­clud­ed fes­ti­val, Tull who was speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme, said she en­coun­tered many first-time vis­i­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly younger trav­ellers from across the Caribbean and mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra with fam­i­ly ties to T&T and oth­er re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries.

Tull al­so not­ed that im­proved re­gion­al air con­nec­tiv­i­ty played an im­por­tant role in widen­ing the fes­ti­val’s ap­peal, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to di­rect air links be­tween Bar­ba­dos and To­ba­go, which made trav­el eas­i­er for car­ni­val en­thu­si­asts seek­ing ex­pe­ri­ences across the re­gion.

“As long as you are able to reach these fes­ti­vals, that in­ter-re­gion­al tourism com­po­nent can be strength­ened, and it is some­thing that is quite sus­tain­able,” she said.

Now in its fifth edi­tion, To­ba­go Car­ni­val has shown re­mark­able growth since its in­au­gur­al year, ac­cord­ing to Tull, who has at­tend­ed most of the fes­ti­val’s it­er­a­tions.

“I at­tend­ed the first, I prob­a­bly missed about two. And I would cer­tain­ly say if I had to com­pare to the first year, we are see­ing some tremen­dous growth, not on­ly in terms of the mar­ket, but in terms of vis­i­tors. I would say that more To­bag­o­ni­ans are al­so pa­tro­n­is­ing the car­ni­val. I would al­so say growth, most cer­tain­ly in terms of the va­ri­ety of events that you see.

“If some­one asked me what’s the word I would use as a strength for To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, it would be va­ri­ety. There was a lot of di­ver­si­ty in terms of events, and I think that when one takes all of that to­geth­er, most peo­ple would say that they did have a good time,” Tull added.

She be­lieves To­ba­go Car­ni­val has like­ly gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for the is­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, al­though she not­ed that com­pre­hen­sive da­ta is need­ed to ful­ly quan­ti­fy its im­pact.

Speak­ing from a qual­i­ta­tive and ethno­graph­ic per­spec­tive, Tull said her ob­ser­va­tions dur­ing the fes­ti­val point­ed to strong con­nec­tions be­tween Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty and in­creased spend­ing across sev­er­al sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Draw­ing on pre­vi­ous re­search con­duct­ed with col­leagues, Tull said there is clear ev­i­dence that fes­ti­vals such as To­ba­go Car­ni­val have pos­i­tive spillover ef­fects through­out the econ­o­my.

“One can cer­tain­ly see that there are some strong link­ages, most cer­tain­ly with the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor. So it is more than like­ly that there would have been a spike in rev­enue gen­er­a­tion on ac­count of the fes­ti­val hav­ing oc­curred at the time that it did,” she said.

Tull added in­creased vis­i­tor ar­rivals would have trans­lat­ed in­to high­er for­eign ex­change earn­ings, with many in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors bring­ing and spend­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy di­rect­ly on the is­land.

Be­yond ho­tels and guest­hous­es, she ob­served height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty among re­tail­ers, beau­ty ser­vice providers and gro­cery stores, all of which ap­peared to ben­e­fit from in­creased pa­tron­age dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Tull cau­tioned that To­ba­go must ad­dress sev­er­al is­sues if it hopes to en­cour­age re­peat vis­its and sus­tain the fes­ti­val’s growth.

Point­ing to the lim­it­ed op­er­at­ing hours of some su­per­mar­kets and busi­ness­es, she said vis­i­tors ac­cus­tomed to round-the-clock ser­vices may find the re­stric­tions in­con­ve­nient, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing car­ni­val when events run late in­to the night.

Tull al­so high­light­ed con­cerns about in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing what ap­peared to be pos­si­ble sewage is­sues along pop­u­lar en­ter­tain­ment ar­eas. Ad­dress­ing such short­com­ings, she said, will be crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val re­mains an at­trac­tive and com­pet­i­tive tourism prod­uct in the years ahead.