Tourism Association: Occupancy, tour activity at usual Carnival levels

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to at­tract vis­i­tors to our shores, but tourism of­fi­cials say the sea­son’s per­for­mance re­mains steady rather than ex­pand­ing, with re­peat vis­i­tors dom­i­nat­ing ar­rivals and lim­it­ing eco­nom­ic spin-off for lo­cal op­er­a­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TIATT), ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy and tour ac­tiv­i­ty for Car­ni­val 2026 are at their usu­al lev­els, sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous years, de­spite ex­pec­ta­tions that in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est in the fes­ti­val could trans­late in­to growth.

TIATT chair­man Charles Car­val­ho said yes­ter­day that while pre­cise da­ta were not yet avail­able for 2026, ho­tels were per­form­ing at ex­pect­ed lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly in down­town Port-of-Spain, where most prop­er­ties were filled.

He added that the Bril­liance of the Seas cruise ship was sched­uled to ar­rive to­day with close to its 2,500-pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty, boost­ing vis­i­tor num­bers dur­ing the peak Car­ni­val pe­ri­od. The ra­di­ance-class cruise ship op­er­at­ed by Roy­al Caribbean is ex­pect­ed to de­part on Ash Wednes­day, spend­ing a day in To­ba­go be­fore re­turn­ing to Puer­to Ri­co.

Com­par­ing this sea­son to pre­vi­ous years, Car­val­ho said Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to at­tract a high num­ber of re­peat vis­i­tors, many of whom ar­rive days be­fore the main events and re­main un­til af­ter Ash Wednes­day.

“I have no­ticed many tourists here since last week. You see them in the su­per­mar­kets and the malls. Some have been here for more than a week, but the ma­jor­i­ty are com­ing to­day and to­mor­row and will be leav­ing from Ash Wednes­day in­to next week,” he said.

While re­peat vis­i­tors re­flect loy­al­ty to the des­ti­na­tion, Car­val­ho said they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to strong eco­nom­ic re­turns for the wider tourism sec­tor.

Us­ing his own tour com­pa­ny as an ex­am­ple, he said many re­peat vis­i­tors are al­ready fa­mil­iar with trans­port routes, ac­com­mo­da­tion and at­trac­tions.

“The eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit is not very strong for peo­ple like my­self be­cause re­peat vis­i­tors al­ready know how to get around,” Car­val­ho said.

“But we still have the odd vis­i­tor who comes for the first time and wants to ex­pe­ri­ence Trinidad, go­ing to places like Mara­cas Bay and the Bird Sanc­tu­ary.”

Re­cent of­fi­cial fig­ures sup­port con­cerns about the lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val tourism growth. Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s lat­est pub­lished da­ta, T&T host­ed 34,194 tourists for the 2025 Car­ni­val sea­son, rep­re­sent­ing a 19.1 per cent in­crease com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year. How­ev­er, the same da­ta show that av­er­age vis­i­tor ex­pen­di­ture de­clined by 2.0 per cent, falling from $14,403 in 2024 to $14,110 in 2025, in­di­cat­ing that while more tourists ar­rived, they spent less on av­er­age.

Car­val­ho ar­gued that stronger and more strate­gic mar­ket­ing was need­ed to grow Car­ni­val tourism be­yond its cur­rent plateau, par­tic­u­lar­ly by tar­get­ing new mar­kets and first-time vis­i­tors.

Car­val­ho said T&T missed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote it­self dur­ing re­cent pe­ri­ods of height­ened in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion linked to re­gion­al geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments.

“We should have gone out there with a lit­tle bit of mar­ket­ing, let­ting the name Trinidad echo in peo­ple’s minds and stay rel­e­vant,” he said. “Now things are nor­mal again, and it is no longer in the news.”

He added that achiev­ing mean­ing­ful tourism growth would re­quire sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in pro­mo­tion and ex­pan­sion of room stock to ac­com­mo­date in­creased de­mand, should mar­ket­ing ef­forts suc­ceed.

Mean­while, Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj has is­sued a video wel­come mes­sage invit­ing vis­i­tors to ex­pe­ri­ence Car­ni­val, de­scrib­ing it as a cel­e­bra­tion of cul­ture, cre­ativ­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty. In the mes­sage, post­ed on the min­istry’s so­cial me­dia page, Ma­haraj en­cour­aged re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences to take part in what he de­scribed as an im­mer­sive artis­tic and cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

When con­tact­ed for of­fi­cial tourism sta­tis­tics for the Car­ni­val sea­son, how­ev­er, Ma­haraj said he was in a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and was un­able to pro­vide fig­ures at that time.