Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Rev­ellers un­able to book their tick­ets on the seabridge for the Oc­to­ber car­ni­val may get their op­por­tu­ni­ty on Mon­day, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty will an­nounce ad­di­tion­al sail­ings of the Buc­coo Reef and T&T Spir­it fast fer­ries.

Op­tions have al­so opened on the air­bridge as Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar re­vealed ad­di­tion­al flights for the Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1 fes­ti­val will be an­nounced soon.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Kow­lessar said CAL has been in dis­cus­sion with car­ni­val stake­hold­ers and will be adding 6,928 seats to meet the high de­mand.

The Buc­coo Reef and TT Spir­it were not list­ed in the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­is­land Fer­ry Ser­vice sched­ule re­leased on Tues­day, spark­ing wide­spread con­cerns among rev­ellers who have al­ready paid for ac­com­mo­da­tion, cos­tumes and fete tick­ets for the Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1 fes­ti­val.

The fer­ry sched­ule showed just the APT James fast fer­ry and Gold­en Car­ri­er car­go boat op­er­at­ing in Oc­to­ber.

In a me­dia state­ment on Wednes­day, Sec­re­tary of Tourism Zor­isha Hack­ett said she was aware of the con­cerns with the ini­tial sched­ule.

Hack­ett said she has spo­ken with Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John and ad­vo­cat­ed for more sail­ings.

The min­is­ter, ac­cord­ing to Hack­ett, promised to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“I be­lieve ef­fec­tive ad­vo­ca­cy means iden­ti­fy­ing po­ten­tial chal­lenges ear­ly, en­gag­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and pur­su­ing the in­ter­ven­tions nec­es­sary in To­ba­go’s in­ter­est,” Hack­ett said.

She added that im­prov­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty has been one of her goals since as­sum­ing of­fice, not­ing her en­gage­ment with CAL re­flects her com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing sup­port for the is­land’s tourism sec­tor.

In a re­lease short­ly af­ter, the Port Au­thor­i­ty, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO), said it is “ramp­ing up” seabridge ca­pac­i­ty for the pe­ri­od. It said the seabridge ca­pac­i­ty for Oc­to­ber 1 to No­vem­ber 11 is cur­rent­ly at 101,720 pas­sen­gers and 32,680 ve­hi­cles.

Just six ad­di­tion­al sail­ings were ini­tial­ly an­nounced for the 2026 car­ni­val.

In 2025, close to 22,000 pas­sen­gers were trans­port­ed to and from the car­ni­val on 68 trips on the seabridge from Oc­to­ber 21-29, with 22 ad­di­tion­al sail­ings pro­vid­ed.

Stake­hold­ers: Seabridge has­sle will hurt To­ba­go Car­ni­val

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers are warn­ing that the pa­tron­age of the an­nu­al To­ba­go Car­ni­val could be­gin to wane if book­ing tick­ets on the seabridge con­tin­ues to be a has­sle. With the fes­ti­val in its fifth year, Roberts-Radg­man said au­thor­i­ties should have a clear idea of trans­port lo­gis­tics and put things in place for the Oc­to­ber 30-No­vem­ber 1 event.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Roberts-Radg­man said she not­ed Port Au­thor­i­ty’s state­ment that in­for­ma­tion about ad­di­tion­al sail­ings of the Buc­coo Reef and Galleons Pas­sage would be re­vealed on Mon­day. How­ev­er, she ques­tioned whether this would meet the in­creased de­mand as the fes­ti­val had be­come ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar among Trinida­di­ans.

“It seems it’s just a small amount of ad­di­tion­al sail­ings we are gonna get for the sea­son,” she said.

With the date for 2026 sea­son known well in ad­vance, Roberts-Radg­man said the sched­ule should have been pri­ori­tised.

“Be­tween East­er and the To­ba­go car­ni­val, those are our biggest and most ex­cit­ing pe­ri­ods on the is­land. We see a lot of ar­rivals from Trinidad. Our in­dus­try re­lies heav­i­ly on those pe­ri­ods — ac­com­mo­da­tion, restau­rants, recre­ation and en­ter­tain­ment re­lies on the suc­cess of those pe­ri­ods to flow them through­out the year and qui­eter pe­ri­ods,” she said.

She not­ed the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ad­min­is­tra­tion has boast­ed about its im­proved re­la­tion­ship with cen­tral gov­ern­ment, but ar­gued To­bag­o­ni­ans have not seen the ben­e­fits.

“Be­cause they sup­pos­ed­ly have all this com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you’d think this was one of the things you’d lock in. This is what I would con­sid­er low-hang­ing fruit to show To­ba­go some love...I don’t un­der­stand why it’s such a chal­lenge at this 99th hour.”

Roberts-Radg­man said mas bands have in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant mon­ey and time in get­ting ready for the fes­ti­val.

Band­leader Mar­cellin Nedd of Mar­cellin Nedd and As­so­ciates said seabridge prob­lems for the car­ni­val is a peren­ni­al is­sue.

“Every year, no mat­ter which gov­ern­ment there, this does al­ways be the out­come. You can’t tell me yuh know the cal­en­dar, yuh know this is the busy sea­son, and yuh on­ly sched­ul­ing one (pas­sen­ger) boat,” she said.