The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts says flight sta­tis­tics from the pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 1 to Feb­ru­ary 13, 2024—the peak Car­ni­val pe­ri­od—show an in­crease in vis­i­tors to T&T. That num­ber re­lates to non-res­i­dent di­as­po­ra re­turn­ing home. 

The Min­istry notes that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 71,010 per­sons vis­it­ed the coun­try.

For the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, Jan­u­ary 26 to Feb­ru­ary 13, da­ta showed some 41,444 vis­i­tors came by air—29,651 non-na­tion­als and 11,793 na­tion­als who are res­i­dent abroad (i.e. mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra)—to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In com­par­i­son, in 2023, vis­i­tor (non-di­as­po­ra) ar­rivals were es­ti­mat­ed at 27,375 for Car­ni­val.

Trinidad al­so wel­comed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,423 pas­sen­gers via cruise calls through­out the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) es­ti­mates vis­i­tors spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$93.3 mil­lion or TT$634 mil­lion.

This fig­ure came from da­ta from last year’s ex­it sur­veys.

Vis­i­tors stayed on av­er­age 13 days, and spent on av­er­age USD$2,251 or TT$15,313 on food, en­ter­tain­ment, ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­port etc.

This year’s CSO sur­vey on vis­i­tors stay and ex­pen­di­ture is not yet avail­able.