Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has an­nounced a se­ries of ini­tia­tives which he hopes will make this coun­try a des­ti­na­tion of choice post the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in­clud­ing a fes­ti­val of fetes card­ed for the end of Au­gust.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Bud­get de­bate, the Tourism Min­is­ter said in the June/Ju­ly months the min­istry be­lieves there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ‘pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing as a fes­ti­val, the num­ber of band launch­es that oc­cur dur­ing the pe­ri­od in­to a band launch sea­son oc­cur­ring over the space of two week­ends which, as we know a band launch takes the form of a mod­el run­way, with cos­tume de­signs, mod­els and de­sign­ers dur­ing a pre­mi­um fete.

He told the Up­per House that fol­low­ing the band-launch ini­tia­tive the Tourism Min­istry sees the pos­si­bil­i­ty of at­tract­ing vis­i­tors who could not make it to Car­ni­val in a fes­ti­val of fetes.

“And to­wards the end of Au­gust, we en­vi­sion an­oth­er fes­ti­val that cel­e­brates our dis­tinct cre­ative cul­ture and how we have been able to in­no­vate our host­ing of events over the past years. With these new fes­ti­vals, we see the cre­ation of eco­nom­ic val­ue for our cul­tur­al work­ers, our artistes, pro­mot­ers, mu­si­cians and their abil­i­ty to earn. As well as all the ser­vice providers. We see the at­trac­tion of vis­i­tors who could not make it for Car­ni­val but who could per­haps vis­it and at­tend some of these new fes­ti­vals. And as we plan and pack­age these fes­ti­vals, at present we are work­ing with the pro­mot­ers and with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice to re­duce the bu­reau­cra­cy that ex­ists with host­ing these events, with per­mis­sions from Fire, Po­lice and the var­i­ous li­cences. Sim­ply put, the idea is to get more vis­i­tors, and more val­ue cre­at­ed in the econ­o­my through our cre­ative sec­tor,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the arts and the cre­ative sec­tor, not­ed that the can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val 2021 was a ma­jor hit to the econ­o­my. He point­ed out that Car­ni­val alone ac­counts for 10 per cent of the coun­try’s to­tal vis­i­tors and al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars in di­rect spend from vis­i­tors, not to men­tion the over­all spend.

“There is no deny­ing the vast eco­nom­ic im­pact for suc­cess­ful fes­ti­vals. Car­ni­val alone, the di­rect eco­nom­ic val­ue for vis­i­tor spend is around TT$450 mil­lion. And this is just count­ing the 10 days lead­ing up to Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. And of course, the ben­e­fits are enor­mous when you con­sid­er all the stake­hold­ers who earn from this fes­ti­val­—the pro­mot­ers, the artistes, the ser­vice providers, mas mak­ers, mu­si­cians, ven­dors and taxi dri­vers,” Mitchell not­ed.

He added, “Car­ni­val at­tracts ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 per cent of our an­nu­al vis­i­tors to our shores, and we in­tend to mar­ket and lever­age on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of our Car­ni­val prod­uct while re­main­ing true to its roots which is what dif­fer­en­ti­ates us. Ear­li­er this year, as Car­ni­val was can­celled, we saw an up­surge in dif­fer­ent types of cre­ative ex­pres­sion—Car­ni­val prod­ucts be­ing pro­duced in a the­atri­cal form in the per­for­mance spaces with the pro­duc­tion mas, as well as through Film with LAVWAY from Tribe. Con­certs were al­so held in­doors with­in our per­for­mance spaces with great suc­cess and we in­tend to en­cour­age and sup­port these of­fer­ings.”

Mitchell said gov­ern­ment sees the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove up­on and build new fes­ti­vals to cre­ate and con­tribute eco­nom­ic val­ue to the coun­try.

He ar­gued that T&T is a melt­ing pot of many creeds and races and there­fore the fes­ti­vals will not be lim­it­ed to Car­ni­val but in­clude of­fer­ings for oth­er fes­ti­vals in­clud­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion, Di­vali and Phag­wa.

The Tourism Min­is­ter said with re­spect to the Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions the min­istry sees the prospect of work­ing more close­ly with the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee to build on that fes­ti­val and to ex­plore any op­por­tu­ni­ties that the de­c­la­ra­tion by the US of June­teenth as a Fed­er­al Hol­i­day may bring, by at­tract­ing the African Di­as­po­ra and re-es­tab­lish­ing our po­si­tion as the first coun­try to de­clare Eman­ci­pa­tion Day a na­tion­al hol­i­day.

“And we al­so feel that there is room to im­prove our Di­vali and Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions which would in­spire greater ap­peal to the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra in the Guyanese and Suri­namese Mar­kets,” Mitchell not­ed.

With sev­er­al Jazz fes­ti­vals al­ready part of the na­tion­al land­scape, Mitchell sees an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pig­gy back on those of­fer­ings to in­crease ar­rivals to this coun­try.

He told the Up­per House, “Events such as North Coast Jazz, Jazz on the Greens, Eat Drink and Jazz and the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val have all sprung up. And we be­lieve there is op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the pro­mot­ers of all these events in com­ing up with a well pack­aged, mar­ketable sea­son which would cul­mi­nate at the end of the East­er Week­end.”

With the plan to in­crease ar­rivals must be a need to up­grade, main­tain and add more rooms to the stock al­ready in ex­is­tence in the coun­try. With that in mind Mitchell said over the the last fi­nan­cial year gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed the con­struc­tion of sev­er­al prop­er­ties.

The Radis­son Blu – 79 apt styled Rooms, de­layed and is card­ed to open next year.

The Brix – 161 rooms is 90% com­plete and sched­uled to open by the end of the year.

Com­fort Inn Suites – 74 Rooms is al­so around 80% com­plete and sched­uled to opened by the end of 2021.

With re­spect to the re­cent­ly an­nounced Mar­riott in To­ba­go Mitchell said, “Pres­i­dent, I al­so had the dis­tinct plea­sure to be a part of the award to the lo­cal con­sor­tium, Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Ltd. of the Rocky Point site af­ter a Com­pet­i­tive RFP, to con­struct an In­te­grat­ed Re­sort De­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go. A 200 Room 4 Star ho­tel.

This will add 200 high qual­i­ty rooms and be­come an An­chor Prop­er­ty for the Is­land of To­ba­go.

With Con­struc­tion due to com­plete by 2024-2025 and 750 per­sons will be em­ployed dur­ing con­struc­tion and about 250 dur­ing Op­er­a­tions. This New Mar­riott and the Com­fort Inn Suites will mar­ry well with the New Air­port Ter­mi­nal Build­ing card­ed to be built.” The Min­is­ter told the Par­lia­ment.

He al­so an­nounced the Hamp­ton by Hilton Trinidad at Pi­ar­co.

“We are present­ly al­so treat­ing with an ap­pli­ca­tion for an­oth­er Ho­tel, Hamp­ton by Hilton at Pi­ar­co in Trinidad for 103 rooms, Cof­fee shop, Restau­rant, Con­fer­ence Meet­ing Room which is card­ed to start in Jan­u­ary 2022. The De­vel­op­er has all the nec­es­sary ap­provals and has ad­vised that the prop­er­ty will take ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 months to com­plete. Cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $65 Mil­lion Dol­lars. And about 250 per­sons will be em­ployed dur­ing the Con­struc­tion Phase and 70 per­sons dur­ing the Op­er­a­tional Phase. So over the next 4 years we ex­pect now to have over 852 Brand New, High Qual­i­ty Rooms here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Min­is­ter al­so crowed about the new KLM flight be­tween Am­s­ter­dam and Port of Spain that would act as a gate­way to Eu­rope.

“We have al­so con­sumed a lot of pro­duc­tive time and ef­fort over the last 2 years of en­gage­ment, and on last Sat­ur­day we wel­comed the re­turn of KLM af­ter more than 20 years. And this new route from Am­s­ter­dam re­opens the pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Ex­pan­sion of Trade, Tourism to the Dutch and oth­er sur­round­ing Mar­kets with Trinidad and To­ba­go. It al­so opens up for faster con­nec­tions for the ma­jor­i­ty of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of the West African and In­di­an Di­as­po­ra to con­nect through Am­s­ter­dam.”

Mitchell added, “ It is a Win­ter Flight, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties to mar­ket our Car­ni­val Of­fer­ings in the months of Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, as well as a quick flight or fer­ry across to To­ba­go for Sun, Sea and Sand to the Eu­ro­pean Mar­ket.”

Mitchell told the Sen­ate that spread­ing and shar­ing T&T’s cul­ture abroad is in­cred­i­bly ef­fec­tive to our Des­ti­na­tion Mar­ket­ing and Strat­e­gy, and al­so to our Cul­tur­al Strat­e­gy.

He point­ed to the suc­cess of such an ap­proach of oth­er coun­tries such as the USA and Ja­maica as a re­sult over the next Fi­nan­cial Year gov­ern­ment plans to em­bark up­on a cam­paign to spread T&T’s cul­ture to the world by en­gag­ing and us­ing its Mis­sions Abroad, as well as the Di­as­po­ra As­so­ci­a­tions and key di­as­po­ra mem­bers and in­flu­encers in a strat­e­gy geared to­wards spread­ing and shar­ing our cul­ture and the mar­ket­ing Ap­peal of our Des­ti­na­tions.

“We al­so have a Cab­i­net Ap­proved Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sador Pro­gramme that we ex­pect to launch short­ly where we will se­lect some Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sadors who have, by their tal­ents, se­cured large fan bases and fol­low­ings across the world to pro­mote the Des­ti­na­tion and our Cul­ture.” he end­ed