Car­ni­val 2025 is be­ing held un­der a lit­tle bit of a cloud. On De­cem­ber 30, 2024, the Gov­ern­ment de­clared a na­tion­wide State of Emer­gency (SoE). Two weeks lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, Par­lia­ment ex­tend­ed the SoE by three months.

How­ev­er, im­por­tant­ly, at a news con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 31, Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who was act­ing as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on that day, con­firmed there would be no cur­few to al­low Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties to con­tin­ue, as he said, “Gov­ern­ment is very con­cerned to en­sure con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion has con­firmed that while the SoE has re­mained in ef­fect for Car­ni­val, the sea­son has still been large­ly suc­cess­ful.

“The events have been suc­cess­ful. They’ve been ex­pert­ly ex­e­cut­ed by the event prac­ti­tion­ers. The lev­els of par­tic­i­pa­tion of cit­i­zens and tourists alike has been sat­is­fac­to­ry. And cer­tain­ly in the con­text of your ques­tion re state of emer­gency, they have been ex­e­cut­ed safe­ly. And that is re­al­ly some­thing that we are very, very grate­ful for at this point. And of course, ex­pect that the rest of this 2025 sea­son is go­ing to be just as safe and as en­joy­able as what we’ve seen so far in the last cou­ple of weeks,” said ad­vo­cate for the TTPA, Paige De Leon in a tele­phone phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

De Leon said while much of the pub­lic fo­cus has been placed on larg­er, all-in­clu­sive fetes with high prices, there had been sev­er­al suc­cess­ful, small­er events across the sea­son.

“I think it’s (been) a mixed bag. I think that what we see now is that while cer­tain events may get the pro­file and the head­lines or the sound bites and the snap­shots, there is, in fact, a prod­uct out there in the mar­ket for every sin­gle per­son who wants to do an event, there is some­thing for you,” she said, “So there are the over-ex­pen­sive events, we all know what they are. And then there are those events that are at a much low­er price point that al­low peo­ple to have the cool­er op­tions or buy drink op­tions, or, you know, less in­volved pro­duc­tion op­tions. So there is a range of op­tions avail­able for every­body, and I think that all of those op­tions are be­ing pa­tro­n­ised by the pub­lic, by our clients, and by our stake­hold­ers. So I’m see­ing a mixed bag for sure.”

The Busi­ness Guardian con­firmed there have been in­stances across the sea­son where fetes with tick­et prices $300 or low­er were suc­cess­ful, in­clud­ing new­er en­tries like Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Hard Fete or Dream Car­ni­val’s Glow Fete held at Nice Place Bar in Ch­agua­nas which saw large at­ten­dances with tick­ets ini­tial­ly cost­ing $200 or less.

“There are lots of of­fer­ings, lots of op­tions, and peo­ple are pa­tro­n­is­ing them based on their taste and what­ev­er de­ter­mines your taste, whether it’s bud­get, whether it’s just what you like to do, whether it’s the age of the per­son, there is some­thing for every­one,” said De Leon.

The TTPA ad­vo­cate said she felt the re­turns pro­mot­ers saw over the Car­ni­val sea­son were on par with pre-pan­dem­ic Car­ni­vals, de­spite the SoE and pro­mot­ers still fac­ing some of the post-COVID chal­lenges.

Those post-pan­dem­ic chal­lenges in­clude in­flat­ed costs of prod­ucts re­quired to host events and that many pro­mot­ers still strug­gled to re­ceive the lev­el of spon­sor­ship they would have pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived from cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go, a trend that has held since the pan­dem­ic.

“The feed­back is that spon­sor­ship is be­ing re­duced gen­er­al­ly, and across the board. Cor­po­ra­tions ap­pear to be spend­ing less in this par­tic­u­lar area. It is some­thing for us to watch, so that as we analyse the trends, we’re go­ing to un­der­stand what the econ­o­my is telling us about this par­tic­u­lar busi­ness mod­el, and when, why and how we can im­prove, in or­der to en­sure that we see cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go go­ing back to the lev­els that we would have had pre-pan­dem­ic,” she said.

“That is the hope, and that is cer­tain­ly a gen­er­al sense of what’s hap­pen­ing in the in­dus­try, where that’s con­cerned,” de Leon added.

How­ev­er, in gen­er­al she felt this Car­ni­val was very heart­en­ing for Car­ni­val pro­mot­ers and events.

“I think that Car­ni­val has just come back. Since the pan­dem­ic, I think this year we are see­ing a ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed-in Car­ni­val sea­son, and this is the first time we would have seen that since those pan­dem­ic years. So that’s a very, very good sign. And we hope that the trend con­tin­ues in that way, in that di­rec­tion,” she ex­plained.

De Leon felt the longer sea­son may have helped in this re­gard as the ex­tend­ed cal­en­dar meant that even with the ad­di­tion of new fetes, most events were well sup­port­ed.

She added, “On be­half of the event pro­duc­ers, we want to thank all of Trinidad and To­ba­go for com­ing to­geth­er in the way that they have and re­al­ly show­ing the world what Car­ni­val means. Trinida­di­ans have used the op­por­tu­ni­ty of Car­ni­val to make a very clear state­ment about how much they val­ue the cul­ture. I think that all types of events have been very well pa­tro­n­ised. You know, pan has done well, The mass has done well. The events have done well and the ca­lyp­so has done well. So we’re very, very hap­py.”

De Leon al­so not­ed that in the midst of the sea­son, sev­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al car­ni­vals, which are styled af­ter T&T’s Car­ni­val, have had a mar­ket­ing pres­ence in events as well. She said this al­so re­flect­ed pos­i­tive­ly on T&T’s prod­uct.

“I know that there are at least six or sev­en for­eign fes­ti­val own­ers in the coun­try right now. Some of them are on the ra­dio, and some of them are just out net­work­ing, meet­ing peo­ple and get­ting the lay of the land. And I think that that’s an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment when it comes to how the Car­ni­val land­scape across the world is grow­ing,” she said.

“So that Car­ni­val in­dus­tri­al com­plex, the idea is start­ing to re­al­ly man­i­fest it­self, even in ways like that, where we’re not just look­ing at Trinidad as an event. Peo­ple come here to see what we’re do­ing. Oth­er peo­ple are recog­nis­ing the val­ue of bring­ing their mon­ey here to ad­ver­tise. And so that’s some­thing that I think is pos­i­tive, and it says a lot about the lev­els of re­spect and, you know, un­der­stand­ing of what Trinidad and To­ba­go rep­re­sents in the world of Car­ni­val.”