The To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has giv­en the just con­clud­ed To­ba­go Car­ni­val ‘top marks’.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, To­ba­go cham­ber chair­man Cur­tis Williams said the three-day event was a top in­come gen­er­a­tor.

“We have some of our sup­pli­ers in­di­cat­ing to us that it was one of the bet­ter times they had in terms of sales, com­ing from drink whole­salers, bars, su­per­mar­kets and pro­mot­ers. Some re­port­ed over 500 per cent dif­fer­ence from last year when we held the first Car­ni­val. I know we will con­tin­ue to earn as we move for­ward. It is not an easy task,” he said.

The cham­ber al­so com­mend­ed ACP Col­lis Hazel, Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris, and all oth­er stake­hold­ers in­volved in the suc­cess of To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val for their con­tri­bu­tions to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

He said the Car­ni­val is on the right track for suc­cess.

“The main peo­ple run­ning all these events were To­bag­o­ni­ans, so we see the ven­dors do­ing well. We are see­ing good num­bers, and we are hap­py with that.”

Williams al­so dis­missed crit­i­cism from Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (NCC) chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke over the or­gan­i­sa­tion of this year’s Car­ni­val.

On Sun­day dur­ing the Pa­rade of the Bands, Pe­ters told the me­dia that while there were some sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments this year, key as­pects were miss­ing from the Car­ni­val. Then, on Tues­day, Duke said To­ba­go must re­think the way it plans the event. He pro­posed a Car­ni­val city with year-round events.

In re­sponse, Williams said, “He (Duke) needs to get the fig­ures, and if he had the fig­ures, he would not say any­thing like that. He would be join­ing us in say­ing ‘Yes, the THA did well.’ With Gyp­sy, I don’t know what went on there, but there seems to be a break­down be­tween two en­ti­ties, and I wish the NCC and THA could sit down and have a di­a­logue.”

The cham­ber chair­man added that To­ba­go Tourism and Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion re­port­ed that ho­tels were close to 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy, while vil­las and guest­hous­es were at full ca­pac­i­ty. He said this ben­e­fit­ed every sin­gle sec­tor of the To­ba­go busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) al­so came in for praise for ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ing con­ges­tion and back­logs at the is­land’s ports and air­ports fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of its Car­ni­val.

In­ter­is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee head De­mi John Cruick­shank said there were no re­ports of con­ges­tion at the Scar­bor­ough Port nor the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“We did not hear at any time that there was a back­log at the ports from Trinidad, nor from peo­ple re­turn­ing from To­ba­go for Car­ni­val, and I think that is his­to­ry in terms of this Car­ni­val and even on the is­land as a whole,” he said. “Nor­mal­ly, we would have had chaos and peo­ple say­ing that they missed their sail­ing. That did not hap­pen.

“Why is the cham­ber so ex­cit­ed? Be­cause the en­tire pop­u­la­tion of To­ba­go made mon­ey, and that is our main con­cern. That is what the cham­ber needs to see—the econ­o­my mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion. We have had a de­pressed econ­o­my for the last two years, and we need to see some sort of pos­i­tive progress.”

To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val end­ed on Oc­to­ber 29.

Cruick­shank said be­tween Oc­to­ber 15-31, PATT trans­port­ed over 17,410 pas­sen­gers and over 5,000 ve­hi­cles. In a re­lease on Wednes­day, CAL said of the 7,144 seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty pro­vid­ed from Trinidad to To­ba­go on 92 flights, 4,892 were used and 2,252 were un­used. For pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling from To­ba­go to Trinidad for the same pe­ri­od, 4,503 seats were used, while 2,641 were emp­ty.