Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cul­prits at­tempt­ed to en­ter Wednes­day’s Hy­att Lime fete with fake tick­ets and coun­ter­feit hand­bands, but none were suc­cess­ful, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (UDe­COTT) chair­man Shankar Bidaisee con­firmed yes­ter­day. There have al­so been no re­ports of cy­ber-at­tacks to ob­tain fete tick­ets.

Bidaisee, who at­tend­ed the fete and pur­chased his VIP Di­a­mond Tick­et for $4,617.20 out of his own funds, said, “As oc­curs an­nu­al­ly, there were in­stances of peo­ple try­ing to en­ter with fake tick­ets and hand­bands, which are used to ver­i­fy pur­chase. But there are no re­ports that any­one suc­ceed­ed. Mea­sures are be­ing stepped up to pre­vent these in­creas­ing­ly in­no­v­a­tive at­tempts.”

He not­ed the usu­al oc­cur­rence of tick­et scalpers who buy ear­ly and re­sell at high­er prices, a prac­tice be­yond UDe­COTT’s con­trol. “The fete was en­vi­sioned as the pre­mier Car­ni­val event in Trinidad and To­ba­go and has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that po­si­tion. It was no sur­prise that tick­ets sold out long be­fore the event,” Bidaisee said.

The fete, he con­firmed, was a suc­cess. Prof­its from the event be­long to UDe­COTT, with an in­crease pro­ject­ed for the 2026 edi­tion.

Bidaisee ex­plained that in pre­vi­ous years, hun­dreds of com­pli­men­ta­ry Hy­att Lime tick­ets were dis­trib­uted to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, com­pa­nies, UDe­COTT em­ploy­ees, and oth­er of­fice hold­ers, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced prof­its.

“This prac­tice placed a fi­nan­cial strain on the State. This year, that was stopped. No free tick­ets were dis­trib­uted — ex­ter­nal per­sons, in­clud­ing of­fice hold­ers, were re­quired to pay for their own tick­ets,” he said. In­vi­ta­tions to UDe­COTT staff were al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

High­light­ing the fete’s prof­itabil­i­ty over the years, Bidaisee said, “Each Hy­att Lime gen­er­ates sub­stan­tial prof­it for UDe­COTT. In 2023, prof­it was TT$1,011,628; in 2024, TT$2,751,017; and in 2025, $2,073,555. For 2026, UDe­COTT an­tic­i­pates an in­creased prof­it. Fi­nal ac­counts will be gen­er­at­ed in due course.”

De­spite this, sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als still re­quest­ed free tick­ets, all of which were de­clined in line with the Gov­ern­ment’s di­rec­tive that no State funds be used for Car­ni­val fete tick­ets.

Bidaisee al­so in­struct­ed Hy­att to dis­con­tin­ue full fire­works dis­plays and con­sid­er drone-based al­ter­na­tives.

“Feed­back in­di­cates that the event was sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than pre­vi­ous years. UDe­COTT in­tends to build on these ex­pe­ri­ences for fu­ture events,” he added.