Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go is ex­pect­ing a record num­ber of ar­rivals for this year’s Oc­to­ber car­ni­val with the T&T Spir­it fast fer­ry back on the seabridge. The ves­sel re­turned to ser­vice yes­ter­day and is sched­uled to op­er­ate dai­ly from Oc­to­ber 28-30 and on No­vem­ber 2 and 3. The ves­sel adds an ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of 8,000 pas­sen­gers and 1,360 ve­hi­cles.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said over 60,000 vis­i­tors are an­tic­i­pat­ed for the Oc­to­ber 30–No­vem­ber 1 fes­ti­val, up from a record 40,000 last year. In 2025, Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) trans­port­ed 22,000 peo­ple to the is­land in the peak pe­ri­od, while 22,318 trav­elled to To­ba­go via the in­ter-is­land fer­ries.

CAL ramped up its ca­pac­i­ty a week ago with 7,000 ad­di­tion­al seats, but many peo­ple have been com­plain­ing on­line about not be­ing able to ac­cess them.

Au­gus­tine said while flights were be­ing re­leased in­cre­men­tal­ly, pref­er­ence was giv­en to mas bands and fete pro­mot­ers to en­sure no ma­jor dis­rup­tions to the car­ni­val.

“The mas bands have peo­ple that buy cos­tumes but don’t have any tick­ets. Then the pro­mot­ers have artistes and so on that have to come, but don’t have tick­ets. The seats are be­ing tak­en up quick­ly by those cat­e­gories be­cause they make some arrange­ments to hold back tick­ets for those peo­ple to be able to ful­fil their oblig­a­tions to their clients.”

CAL act­ing CEO Var­ma Khillawan con­firmed an arrange­ment was made through the To­ba­go Tourism Agency for 435 tick­ets to be re­served for mas bands and pro­mot­ers. He said these tick­ets were pre-booked and paid for in June.

On the avail­abil­i­ty of flights for the car­ni­val, he said the ma­jor­i­ty of seats for the peak pe­ri­od have al­ready been sold out.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett be­lieves more flights are need­ed to meet the height­ened de­mand.

“It is im­por­tant that ad­di­tion­al flights con­tin­ue to be made avail­able to meet To­ba­go’s crit­i­cal air­lift needs, while en­sur­ing that those who de­pend on reg­u­lar move­ment be­tween the is­lands, in­clud­ing those trav­el­ling for rea­sons un­re­lat­ed to car­ni­val, are ad­e­quate­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed dur­ing this peak pe­ri­od.”

Hack­ett said she re­mains grate­ful to CAL for its will­ing­ness to lis­ten, en­gage and re­spond to is­sues af­fect­ing To­ba­go.

Au­thor­i­ties pre­vi­ous­ly as­sured that the Buc­coo Reef will al­so be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the car­ni­val sched­ule.