Cur­tis Williams

Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

With ex­po­nen­tial growth in ar­rivals for its T&T style Car­ni­val and now placed on the is­land's tourism events cal­en­der, Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Tourism Ed­mund Bartlett has said the is­land does not want to take over T&T's car­ni­val but rather en­hance it.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, here at the Mon­tego Bay con­ven­tion cen­tre, Bartlett said, "Ja­maica is not tak­ing away car­ni­val, Ja­maica is adding val­ue to car­ni­val."

In 2019 be­fore the pan­dem­ic, every room and Airbnb prop­er­ty in Kingston and en­vi­rons was sold out for the days lead­ing up to the is­land's car­ni­val, so much so that some peo­ple have to find ac­com­mo­da­tion as far away as Ocho Rios-two hours dri­ve from Kingston.

The is­land's Tourism Min­is­ter said Ja­maica stum­bled in­to Car­ni­val but is ex­cit­ed and com­mit­ted to host­ing it and let­ting it be part of its tourism of­fer­ing.

" Ja­maica has sought of walked in­to the car­ni­val are­na and is lit­er­al­ly tak­ing it over. Our Trinida­di­an friends prob­a­bly won't agree with that (laughs), but I think that we have come a good way with it. It's good be­cause what it says is that there can be a com­mon Caribbean cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence that we can take from is­land to is­land, just the same way I think that reg­gae has be­come quite a re­gion­al genre and that peo­ple all over the world en­gage in- so car­ni­val can be­come a sim­i­lar kind of glob­al mu­si­cal and danc­ing in­stru­ment and we look for­ward to that."

This year Ja­maica's Car­ni­val will be held from Ju­ly 1 to Ju­ly 10th, hav­ing been pushed back from ear­li­er this year be­cause of con­cerns about the covid 19 virus.