Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh @guardian.co.tt

As the two-day epi­cen­tre of the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals kicks off to­mor­row, there are some who may ques­tion whether all of this pomp and splen­dour is worth it in the end.

Every year mil­lions of dol­lars are in­ject­ed in­to the prepa­ra­tion of this cel­e­bra­tion that at­tracts crowds from every cor­ner of the world.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta drawn from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) Sur­vey of De­part­ing Vis­i­tors, the av­er­age es­ti­mat­ed vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture for the Car­ni­val Pe­ri­od grows con­sis­tent­ly each year.

Ex­empt from this growth, how­ev­er, were the years af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, 2021 and 2022 where ob­ser­vance was ei­ther laid back or non-ex­is­tent.

The last vi­able year of da­ta in 2020, saw around 37,861 Car­ni­val vis­i­tors hav­ing an av­er­age ex­pen­di­ture of $12,101, bring­ing the to­tal vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture for that Car­ni­val pe­ri­od to $458,155,961.

One econ­o­mist, Dr Vanus James stat­ed fol­low­ing the trend in num­bers, Car­ni­val has raked in over the years, things look promis­ing for the 2023 fes­ti­val.

“For­eign vis­i­tors re­main high, av­er­ag­ing 36,000+ over the past nine years mi­nus 2021, and vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­tures are sus­tain­ing at a high lev­el or ris­ing, av­er­ag­ing more than $388 mil­lion in 2019 and above $458 mil­lion in 2020. 2023 might even be a block­buster year,” he said.

James al­so in­di­cat­ed that while there have been no sys­tem­at­ic stud­ies to es­tab­lish the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of T&T’s Car­ni­val, there are some clues that sug­gest it is thriv­ing.

“Big­ger and big­ger Car­ni­val op­er­a­tions are de­vel­op­ing pro­duc­tions with­out the ben­e­fit of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, among these be­ing mas bands such as Tribe and mu­si­cal shows such as Machel’s. Some of the big bands no longer both­er to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tions be­cause the pub­licly fund­ed prizes are un­eco­nom­i­cal, giv­en the con­di­tions set by the NCC.”

He al­so ref­er­enced the tra­jec­to­ry that so­ca artiste Machel Mon­tano’s ca­reer has tak­en, which has grown in­to the most suc­cess­ful artiste in the coun­try’s his­to­ry. This growth, he added “is not a like­ly de­vel­op­ment in an in­dus­try that is not vi­able.”

Not on­ly have artistes and fete pro­mot­ers de­vel­oped their craft, James added that even mas bands were able to grasp their foot­ing in new mar­kets to main­tain a lev­el of cost-ef­fi­cien­cy.

He said: “The mas bands have been evolv­ing to ad­dress eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty, mov­ing from the his­tor­i­cal­ly ful­ly in­te­grat­ed do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion of bands to in­creas­ing in­te­gra­tion in­to the glob­al val­ue chain in or­der to keep costs down.”

In ad­di­tion to this, a study con­duct­ed for the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank in 2016 showed that the cre­ative in­dus­tries, to which Car­ni­val be­longs were a net ex­porter, which gen­er­at­ed a pos­i­tive in­tra-in­dus­try trade bal­ance of $3.9 mil­lion.

De­spite the boom­ing in­dus­try, how­ev­er, he stressed that con­stant at­ten­tion must be paid to its growth to set T&T’s Car­ni­val above all oth­ers.

He added that while the cel­e­bra­tions have been repli­cat­ed, “the chal­lenge of copy­ing the prac­tices and prod­ucts of a dy­nam­ic cre­ative in­dus­try is enor­mous.”

This, he at­trib­ut­es to the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved in learn­ing and mas­ter­ing a craft that is not in­trin­si­cal­ly known by for­eign­ers.

“A good ex­am­ple is the abil­i­ty of the mu­si­cians to pro­duce new mu­sic for the Car­ni­val every year. What cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na make this pos­si­ble?” he ques­tioned.

To keep ahead of the game, how­ev­er, he stressed that “pol­i­cy­mak­ers must treat Car­ni­val as an in­dus­try and pay in­creas­ing at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of its cre­ative foun­da­tions.”

James said through in­vest­ments in sev­er­al sec­tors, T&T will be able to max­imise the true po­ten­tial that Car­ni­val presents. He of­fered sev­er­al po­ten­tial ar­eas that need­ed more ex­plo­ration.

With the per­me­ation of tech­nol­o­gy and the pres­ence of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), this is an un­tapped mar­ket re­source. More and more we see how AI as­sists in the re­duc­tion of hu­man er­ror, the mun­dan­i­ty of repet­i­tive tasks and even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of 24/7 avail­abil­i­ty.

James spec­u­lat­ed that these im­ple­men­ta­tions might have mag­nan­i­mous ef­fects when paired with­in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try cor­rect­ly. In or­der to do this though, James said there need­ed to be in­vest­ments in cer­tain ar­eas.

“Re­search and de­vel­op­ment to un­der­write and build on cul­ture-based cre­ativ­i­ty, with fi­nan­cial and oth­er in­cen­tives to ap­ply AI-dri­ven dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in the di­rec­tion of avatar-based and year-round spin­offs such as video pro­duc­tion, film pro­duc­tion, an­i­ma­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in video games,” he said.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of the “de­vel­op­ment of fi­nanc­ing in­stru­ments that recog­nise the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty prod­ucts cre­at­ed each year as as­sets that can be used as col­lat­er­al.” This can pos­si­bly pro­tect the man­age­ment of the fes­ti­val’s cre­ations such as de­signs.

James stat­ed that over the years, many of the prof­it-mak­ing as­pects of Car­ni­val were un­aid­ed by the gov­ern­ment.

“I think that the main con­cern has to be with the un­sus­tain­able spon­sor­ship-based busi­ness mod­el of the steel bands. So­ca and the works of mas have es­sen­tial­ly tak­en off in­to sus­tain­able growth with­out gov­ern­ment sup­port or the sup­port of spon­sors.”

This he added needs some im­prove­ment, since these in­dus­tries, specif­i­cal­ly the mu­sic in­dus­try, have great po­ten­tial for bring­ing in rev­enue if the right crowds are pulled. He pro­posed the “trans­for­ma­tion of the busi­ness mod­el of the steel bands, us­ing them to an­chor the de­vel­op­ment of high-qual­i­ty mu­sic schools across the econ­o­my” as well as bank­ing on the unique­ness of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

One mar­ket James be­lieve has a lot of po­ten­tial to cap­i­talise on is the dy­namism of Car­ni­val, which is once again the ad­vent of AI.

Through the use of AI, he be­lieves there are nu­mer­ous prospects.

He said that “thou­sands of hours of filmed footage of the Car­ni­val from dif­fer­ent van­tage points would pro­vide skilled pro­gram­mers de­ploy­ing tools like ma­chine learn­ing could cre­ate Car­ni­val-in­spired and pho­to­re­al­is­tic avatars us­ing speech AI, com­put­er vi­sion, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, un­der­stand­ing and gen­er­a­tion, rec­om­men­da­tion en­gines, sim­u­la­tion tech­nolo­gies and the like.”

Through the util­i­sa­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy, T&T can “fos­ter a dy­nam­ic and con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing Car­ni­val gam­ing en­vi­ron­ment, com­plete with prizes for which gamers can com­pete di­rect­ly or through the avatars they cham­pi­on.”

Ac­cord­ing to James, each year’s Car­ni­val events will pro­vide fresh da­ta and in­for­ma­tion for the an­i­ma­tion mill.

“It is safe to say that the more peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Car­ni­val, the more Car­ni­val avatars there will be.”

He be­lieves “if mod­ern digi­tised in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion be­comes a key ba­sis of the year-round in­dus­try of the fu­ture,” T&T will be ahead of the game.

An­oth­er econ­o­mist, Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon al­so stat­ed that the Car­ni­val in­dus­try is a lu­cra­tive one for those in­volved.

“Each year the Car­ni­val ecosys­tem pro­vides many op­por­tu­ni­ties for rev­enue earn­ings and job cre­ation, es­pe­cial­ly in the cre­ative, tourist and ser­vice in­dus­tries. Tourist ar­rivals large­ly peak at this time.

“Gen­er­al­ly, ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy reach­es 100 per cent dur­ing Car­ni­val week, but it on­ly av­er­ages 50 per cent to 60 per cent each week for the rest of the year,” he said.

Ar­joon al­so ref­er­enced the CSO’s Sur­vey of De­part­ing Vis­i­tors not­ing the con­sis­tent in­crease in vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture over the years.

De­spite the set­back faced last two years, he stat­ed, “for this year, pre­lim­i­nary fore­casts sug­gest that the av­er­age amount like­ly to be spent per Car­ni­val vis­i­tor may range be­tween $12,500 to $14,630.”

When com­pared to 2020, this shows a $399 to $2,529 in­crease. An­oth­er fac­tor that should be ac­count­ed for re­gard­ing the in­creased ex­pen­di­ture, how­ev­er, was the in­creased prices of fete tick­ets this year.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, he said, the en­tire ser­vice in­dus­try with­in T&T ex­pe­ri­ences an in­crease in de­mand for their ser­vices.

Ar­guably the most prof­itable sec­tor dur­ing Car­ni­val, the cre­ative in­dus­try al­so has a high­er ap­peal for its prod­ucts and ser­vices, which are not on­ly re­strict­ed to the shores of T&T.

“Rev­enues are al­so earned through the mu­sic in­dus­try reach­ing in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders. Those in­volved in the de­sign and man­u­fac­tur­ing of cos­tumes for bands not on­ly fa­cil­i­tate em­ploy­ment lo­cal­ly and earn high­er rev­enues at this time but al­so pro­vide their ser­vices for Car­ni­val in Lon­don, New York, Toron­to and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, sound en­gi­neers typ­i­cal­ly in­volved in Car­ni­val lo­cal­ly are al­so in high de­mand for Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in for­eign coun­tries, which al­low them to earn rev­enues in for­eign cur­ren­cy.”

Ar­joon stat­ed that while peo­ple were spec­u­lat­ing 2023, the Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals would have a “pent-up de­mand” by most to par­tic­i­pate in Car­ni­val events, this was not the case.

He said: “The de­mand ap­pears to be con­tin­gent on house­hold in­come lev­els. Many pa­trons in the mid­dle to low­er-in­come groups have been more se­lec­tive about which ac­tiv­i­ties they par­tic­i­pate in. For in­stance, in­stead of at­tend­ing four fetes, some opt­ed to at­tend one or two—the rea­son be­ing that the cost of liv­ing has surged in the last two years and many house­holds are more pru­dent with how they spend their monies.”

He al­so men­tioned the slow sales of tick­ets, which in­evitably led to the can­cel­la­tion of fetes, de­spite the promi­nence of artistes dur­ing this time.

Ar­joon stat­ed that these in­creas­es re­al­ly on­ly af­fect­ed cit­i­zens who fell in­to the low-in­come brack­ets which high­lights the sig­nif­i­cant in­come dis­par­i­ty lev­els lo­cal­ly.

“Many in the up­per-in­come brack­ets, con­tin­ue to pa­tro­n­ise events in a man­ner sim­i­lar to the pre-pan­dem­ic, with some spend­ing even more, which ex­plains why some of the more ex­pen­sive mas­quer­ad­er bands and events were sold out ear­ly,” he said.