Car­ni­val ac­com­mo­da­tion in Port of Spain is al­ready in high de­mand ahead of the Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17 fes­tiv­i­ties, with ma­jor ho­tels ei­ther ful­ly booked or of­fer­ing lim­it­ed rooms at pre­mi­um rates, high­light­ing the pres­sure on vis­i­tors try­ing to se­cure last-minute stays.Checks with sev­er­al lead­ing ho­tels re­vealed that from to­day (Feb­ru­ary 12), there are no avail­able rooms in Port-of-Spain.

The Hy­att Re­gency con­firmed it was ful­ly booked from Feb­ru­ary 12 to 19, with no rooms avail­able un­der ei­ther lo­cal or stan­dard rates. Lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty is open briefly on Feb­ru­ary 17 and 19. When rooms be­come avail­able, the av­er­age night­ly rate was US$US$640.01 be­fore tax­es, ex­clud­ing break­fast, and US$660.56 in­clud­ing break­fast and tax­es, sub­ject to change de­pend­ing on de­mand.

Brix Ho­tel al­so con­firmed it was ful­ly booked for the same pe­ri­od. Reser­va­tion staff in­di­cat­ed that room rates dur­ing the Car­ni­val win­dow reached ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$700 per night for sin­gle oc­cu­pan­cy, with prices in­creas­ing for dou­ble or triple oc­cu­pan­cy.

At the Trinidad Hilton and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, avail­abil­i­ty was sim­i­lar­ly scarce. The reser­va­tions staff con­firmed that on­ly two rooms re­mained for the pe­ri­od from Feb­ru­ary 12 to 19, priced at US$920 per night be­fore tax­es. Break­fast was not in­clud­ed, and the book­ing terms re­quired full up­front pay­ment with no can­cel­la­tion or mod­i­fi­ca­tion per­mit­ted.

The Radis­son Ho­tel re­port­ed no avail­abil­i­ty for Car­ni­val Thurs­day, with its next open­ing on­ly on Sat­ur­day. Room rates were quot­ed at US$615 per night be­fore tax­es, with break­fast in­clud­ed.

Out­side of Port-of-Spain, the Busi­ness Guardian called two ma­jor ho­tels in south Trinidad, with the Roy­al Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do, con­firm­ing it still has rooms avail­able for the week of Feb­ru­ary 12 to 19. Those rooms are be­ing of­fered at a week­ly rate of $5,500 (US$847) for sin­gle or dou­ble oc­cu­pan­cy with a com­pli­men­ta­ry break­fast.

Cara Ho­tels in Clax­ton Bay re­port­ed a Car­ni­val-week rate of US$245 per night for for­eign guests, in­clu­sive of break­fast, avail­able through Feb­ru­ary 19. Af­ter the car­ni­val pe­ri­od, rates drop to US $205 per night.

In Trinci­ty, the Hol­i­day Inn Ex­press in­di­cat­ed there was no avail­abil­i­ty from Feb­ru­ary 12 to 17, and the rooms were be­ing of­fered at US$225 per night, in­clud­ing break­fast. How­ev­er, on­ly five rooms re­main at this rate for the pe­ri­od of Feb­ru­ary 18 and 19.

Against this back­drop of sold-out rooms and pre­mi­um pric­ing at larg­er ho­tels, the ex­pe­ri­ence of small­er ac­com­mo­da­tion providers has been far more un­even.

Pres­i­dent of the Small Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Own­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (STAOTT), Denise Ale­ong, de­scribed a Car­ni­val sea­son that is thriv­ing in cen­tral Port of Spain but leav­ing many small op­er­a­tors be­hind.

“As far as I’m aware, the prop­er­ties in and around Port of Spain are more or less 100 per cent booked. I haven’t heard any­body talk­ing about can­cel­la­tions,” Ale­ong ex­plained. “But some prop­er­ties out­side of Port of Spain don’t have any book­ings at all.”

She con­firmed that at least one mem­ber prop­er­ty in To­ba­go re­ceived no Car­ni­val-re­lat­ed book­ings, de­spite the tra­di­tion­al trend of vis­i­tors ex­tend­ing their stay be­yond Trinidad.
“I know Car­ni­val is not tak­ing place in To­ba­go, but nor­mal­ly, for Car­ni­val, peo­ple will go to To­ba­go as well.”

While Car­ni­val book­ings re­main in­tact, Ale­ong finds it no­table that se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised else­where have not af­fect­ed the fes­ti­val it­self.

“We haven’t had any Car­ni­val can­cel­la­tions as far as I’m aware,” she said. “Strange­ly enough, there’s no con­cern with se­cu­ri­ty when it comes to Car­ni­val.”

This con­trasts sharply with can­cel­la­tions ex­pe­ri­enced in Jan­u­ary and in March, par­tic­u­lar­ly from in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dent groups.
“These can­cel­la­tions hap­pened pre-Jan­u­ary,” she ex­plained. “In my case, one stu­dent group post­poned from Jan­u­ary to March and then even­tu­al­ly said they’re not com­ing at all.”

She linked the de­ci­sion to ex­ter­nal geopo­lit­i­cal con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly per­cep­tions among over­seas uni­ver­si­ties.

“The uni­ver­si­ties were con­cerned about send­ing stu­dents here,”Ale­ong said. “Even though I tried to con­vince them oth­er­wise.”

She de­scribed the rea­son­ing as dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the packed cal­en­dar of pre-Car­ni­val events.
“There’s no ev­i­dence on the ground that in­di­cates any threat to their safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty,” she added, point­ing to fes­ti­vals, fetes, and gov­ern­ment-sup­port­ed ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place across the coun­try.

Small ho­tels, pro­cure­ment and pol­i­cy gap

Out­side the Car­ni­val win­dow, Ale­ong said many small prop­er­ties con­tin­ue to strug­gle with in­con­sis­tent book­ings and lost tra­di­tion­al busi­ness.
The Small Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Own­ers cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents 20 prop­er­ties and nine af­fil­i­ate mem­bers. That num­ber has de­clined since the pan­dem­ic, as op­er­a­tors re­assessed their busi­ness mod­els.

“We’re on an on­go­ing mem­ber­ship dri­ve be­cause we’ve lost mem­bers for dif­fer­ent rea­sons,” Ale­ong ex­plained. “Post-COVID, some have changed their busi­ness mod­els, and oth­ers are do­ing dif­fer­ent types of busi­ness with their prop­er­ty.”

She al­so raised con­cerns about the redi­rec­tion of Car­ni­val-re­lat­ed book­ings away from small prop­er­ties.

“Some small prop­er­ties that would nor­mal­ly re­ceive book­ings from Car­ni­val en­ti­ties like pan groups have not re­ceived those book­ings this year,” she not­ed. “They are be­ing redi­rect­ed to the larg­er ho­tels, which we find very strange.”

Ale­ong ques­tioned how this aligns with the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent­ly launched buy-lo­cal cam­paign.
“If you’re talk­ing about buy-lo­cal, it has to be true to its name,” she ar­gued. “That in­cludes ser­vices. It should in­clude small, tra­di­tion­al, au­then­tic ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties.”

Pro­cure­ment rules, she be­lieves, re­main a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er. Many small ac­com­mo­da­tion providers are not reg­is­tered with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, lim­it­ing their abil­i­ty to se­cure gov­ern­ment book­ings.
“If a min­istry wants to pay for ac­com­mo­da­tion in a small prop­er­ty, that prop­er­ty has to be on the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) reg­is­ter,” Ale­ong ex­plained. “A lot of peo­ple are not reg­is­tered, and there isn’t enough sup­port to help them get there.”

She al­so point­ed to the ab­sence of reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works gov­ern­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion providers in Trinidad.

“There is no law gov­ern­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a small ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ty,” she said. “That’s why the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion start­ed the process of a tourism au­thor­i­ty and na­tion­al tourism pol­i­cy.”

While To­ba­go op­er­ates a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme through the Bu­reau of Stan­dards, Ale­ong not­ed that the same sys­tem is not func­tion­ing in Trinidad due to the ab­sence of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed.

“There was an MOU in the past that al­lowed prop­er­ties to be vol­un­tar­i­ly cer­ti­fied. That is not in place now,” she said.

With­out reg­u­la­tion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, or con­sis­tent pro­cure­ment ac­cess, Ale­ong be­lieves the play­ing field re­mains un­even, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing high-de­mand pe­ri­ods like Car­ni­val.

“There is no law to man­age the sec­tor,” she said. “Un­til that changes, small ac­com­mo­da­tion providers will con­tin­ue to feel the squeeze, even when the coun­try is full.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, she re­mains hope­ful that pol­i­cy clar­i­ty and struc­tured en­gage­ment can still emerge, en­sur­ing that the ben­e­fits of T&T’s biggest fes­ti­val ex­tend be­yond the city cen­tre and in­to the wider tourism econ­o­my.