It has been just over a week since US mega stream­er IShowSpeed kicked off his Caribbean tour with his In Re­al Life stream in Trinidad.

Since then, dig­i­tal strate­gist Keron Rose and lo­cal me­dia mon­i­tor­ing and in­tel­li­gence agency Me­dia In­Site fur­ther as­sessed the da­ta one week in­to the tour.

It showed that while T&T still has one of the high­est viewed streams and in­deed led the stream da­ta in terms of en­gage­ment num­bers and to­tal au­di­ence re­ac­tion, oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have gar­nered greater vi­ral mo­ments, with Grena­da’s Jab Rit­u­al cur­rent­ly the most viewed mo­ment of the Amer­i­can’s tour. The da­ta al­so in­di­cat­ed that main­ly Speed him­self, gained trac­tion on in­ter­na­tion­al search­es re­lat­ed to the tour.

How­ev­er, the dig­i­tal strate­gist stressed that the da­ta on­ly tells half the sto­ry. He said the ex­po­sure to IShowSpeed’s 50 mil­lion-plus fol­low­ers gave the coun­try a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties should max­imise.

How­ev­er, Tourism Min­is­ter Ka­ma Ma­haraj stat­ed the stream­er’s trip was a sur­prise. He ex­plained that while the vis­it cre­at­ed brand aware­ness of T&T and the Caribbean, his team had not found a means to lever­age it. In­stead, the Min­istry is pur­su­ing a sep­a­rate strat­e­gy go­ing for­ward.

“We are look­ing at in­flu­encer mar­ket­ing in gen­er­al. This came out of the blue, un­ex­pect­ed­ly. But we are de­vis­ing an in­flu­encer strat­e­gy that is still be­ing worked on,” said Ma­haraj when con­tact­ed by the Busi­ness Guardian by phone on Tues­day.

He said of the stream, “That is more brand aware­ness. (It cre­at­ed) brand aware­ness through­out the Caribbean. But there’s noth­ing that we can pin­point and say we can fol­low up ex­act­ly on that. No, it’s a whole strat­e­gy we are de­vis­ing.”

The stream­er an­nounced the tour two weeks ago, and much of his trip was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Chetan “Che” Kothari, a cre­ative en­tre­pre­neur who is best known as Machel Mon­tano’s man­ag­er.

Kothari did not re­spond to ques­tions about the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the tour sent to him by the Busi­ness Guardian.

How­ev­er, culi­nary con­sul­tant Chef Brigette Joseph, who was tasked with cu­rat­ing the culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence for the stream­er’s vis­it, ex­plained her ap­proach.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute grad­u­ate told the Busi­ness Guardian it was a chal­lenge giv­en T&T’s ex­pan­sive food va­ri­ety.

“The process was re­al­ly about be­ing very in­ten­tion­al. Trinidad’s food cul­ture is so lay­ered, I couldn’t just take him for a dou­bles and call it a day. I ap­proached the cu­ra­tion through the lens of culi­nary sto­ry­telling and ba­si­cal­ly thought about what would gen­uine­ly move some­one who had eat­en all over the world. What of ours would stop him in his tracks and have the most im­pact?” she said.

“That meant se­lect­ing ven­dors and dish­es that were au­then­tic, vi­brant, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of who we are as a peo­ple, as a na­tion. It wasn’t a re­hearsed trail. we tried to have a re­al Tri­ni food ex­pe­ri­ence from the start all the way to the end of his vis­it, and his re­sponse made it all worth­while.”

The 21-year-old mega stream­er was treat­ed to sa­heena from Has­sanali’s at Wood­brook Yard, while al­so sam­pling a punch from Jam and Juice at the same venue. He ate dou­bles from St James ven­dor Josh Bess Dou­bles, pelau, fish and callaloo at Tas­tee To­ba­go at the La­dy Young Look­out be­fore hav­ing a Bake and Shark from Shon­el’s Cater­ing at the Sa­van­nah Strip. The stream­er al­so ate a goat roti from The Kitchen Queen Pe­tra from Chase Vil­lage.

Joseph said the stream fur­ther ce­ment­ed her feel­ing that T&T had a for­mi­da­ble food of­fer­ing com­pared to the rest of the re­gion.

She said, “For me per­son­al­ly, it was one of those ex­pe­ri­ences that af­firmed what I’ve known to be true af­ter trav­el­ling around the re­gion; that Trinidad is the Street Food Cap­i­tal of the Caribbean.”

How­ev­er, see­ing the stream­ers’ re­sponse to T&T’s food al­so gave her great joy. She said, “Watch­ing Speed taste our food and im­me­di­ate­ly say he wants to move here be­cause of it was heart­warm­ing. For the ven­dors, I think the im­pact was sig­nif­i­cant. Our lo­cal street ven­dors do in­cred­i­ble work, of­ten with­out the main­stream spot­light they de­serve. Be­ing part of a mo­ment that reached mil­lions of view­ers glob­al­ly gave them vis­i­bil­i­ty on a scale that’s im­pos­si­ble to man­u­fac­ture. It was val­i­dat­ing for all of us and a re­minder that Trinida­di­an culi­nary cul­ture can hold its own any­where in the world.”

Joseph added that the high vis­i­bil­i­ty did lead to some ven­dors hav­ing an in­crease in so­cial fol­low­ing and sup­port.

CEO of Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Si­mon Hardy, al­so hailed the ex­po­sure the stream had giv­en to KFC Trinidad, and his vis­it to the brand’s In­de­pen­dence branch kicked off a con­tin­u­ous dis­cus­sion through­out the tour as to which Caribbean is­land had the best fried chick­en.

“We are tru­ly for­tu­nate that over the decades, KFC has been wo­ven in­to the fab­ric of all of T&T cit­i­zens lives, help­ing them cel­e­brate key mo­ments. Speed’s vis­it to KFC In­de­pen­dence Square was a re­flec­tion of this. Ob­vi­ous­ly, with 53 mil­lion fol­low­ers, it helped to bring the pas­sion Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have for KFC to a glob­al au­di­ence. Great pos­i­tive ex­po­sure,” Hardy said,

Pres­tige did not di­vulge whether KFC saw in­creased sales as a re­sult of the stream.

It’s not the first time an in­ter­na­tion­al stream­er has come to T&T’s shores to high­light the depth of the coun­try’s culi­nary va­ri­ety.

In­ter­na­tion­al culi­nary in­flu­encer Mark Wiens came to Trinidad in Sep­tem­ber 2022 to pro­mote Trinidad’s culi­nary niche, in a cam­paign sup­port­ed by Tourism Trinidad, “to in­crease aware­ness of the des­ti­na­tion, cre­ate an uptick in so­cial me­dia en­gage­ment and to dri­ve tourism de­mand.”

The US food blog­ger Wiens has 11 mil­lion sub­scribers on his YouTube chan­nel, and at the time of his in­vi­ta­tion to the coun­try, he was the most sub­scribed culi­nary in­flu­encer on YouTube for his chan­nel Mi­gra­tionol­o­gy. His page cur­rent­ly fea­tures nine videos fea­tur­ing con­tent from T&T, with the low­est record­ing 1.5 mil­lion views and the most pop­u­lar ac­cu­mu­lat­ing 6.1 mil­lion views.

For­mer Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said of that cam­paign, “Us­ing a high-reach culi­nary in­flu­encer like Mark Wiens is not sim­ply a pro­mo­tion­al ex­er­cise—it re­flects how mod­ern des­ti­na­tions com­pete in a dig­i­tal, at­ten­tion-dri­ven glob­al mar­ket. This was a well-thought-out, da­ta-dri­ven ini­tia­tive. The se­lec­tion of the in­flu­encer, the fo­cus on culi­nary sto­ry­telling, and the tim­ing of the cam­paign were all in­formed by au­di­ence an­a­lyt­ics, glob­al trav­el trends, and the grow­ing de­mand for au­then­tic food ex­pe­ri­ences.”

He added, “What this ap­proach does is give T&T im­me­di­ate glob­al reach, but with cred­i­bil­i­ty. View­ers are not see­ing a tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tise­ment; they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the des­ti­na­tion through a trust­ed voice and from his point of view. That builds a dif­fer­ent kind of con­nec­tion, one that in­flu­ences re­al trav­el de­ci­sions over time. It al­so al­lows us to dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves strate­gi­cal­ly. Many des­ti­na­tions pro­mote sun and sea; we are lean­ing in­to our strength, our cul­ture, our food, and our peo­ple.”

Mitchell al­so not­ed that “the con­tent cre­at­ed does not dis­ap­pear when the cam­paign ends. These are long-term dig­i­tal as­sets that con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate views, search­es, and in­ter­est well in­to the fu­ture.”

Oth­er stream­ers have vis­it­ed T&T in re­cent years, with UK-based con­tent cre­ator Ma­li­ni An­gel­i­ca among the re­cent, post­ing two videos to her YouTube chan­nel doc­u­ment­ing her vis­it to both is­lands in March. Those videos com­bined for just over 500,000 views.