tidings
Corey Connelly
SECRETARY of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transport Tashia Burris said THA has saved on the $17.5 million it originally planned to spend on Tobago’s inaugural carnival.
She said when all expenses are tabulated, the cost will likely be between $12-13 million.
At the post-executive council press conference Thursday, Burris told reporters, “I’m pleased to report that THA will not be able to meet the $17.5 million that we originally projected we would spend on this carnival. One of the main reasons for that is that there there were some elements of the budget that we weren’t able to accomplish this year. So that’s where a lot of cost savings would be realized.”
She said most of the carnival spending was done through the Tobago Festivals Commission Ltd and the Tobago Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL). The Commission and TTAL are calculating their final bills and invoices.
Noting that there have been complaints about the $17.5 million that was spent to host the carnival, Burris said a large portion of the budget went to marketing.
“I think one of the things we should also look for this October carnival was the fact that we spent some money on the marketing of the carnival. Marketing was a critical component in ensuring that the celebrations and the event itself would be successful.”
She said the money was spent on the media launch, Bago Jam, radio ads, billboards and other marketing elements.
Burris added that people should also keep in mind that after Covid19, the price of goods and services also skyrocketed.
As for visitors, Burris said those numbers are also being tabulated.
“I know that CAL issued an announcement yesterday (Wednesday) which it later canceled in terms of the number of people we were able to move. We actually want to paint a total picture of what these numbers would look like.
“So we’re not necessarily looking at carnival week, but we had a long weekend before that and those people were coming to participate in the carnival events that weekend and most of them stayed until the end of the festivities.”
She added, “We want to give people an idea of the numbers that we were measuring for the entire period that the carnival was announced, which was from October 1 to October 31, so that people have an idea of what the benefits of directly in terms of strong dollars and cents for the economy.”
Burris said the reviews from visitors who have played the game so far have been excellent
“Some of them have indicated that it is the best experience they have ever had. And in our first year, I think it’s a great complement to have when you’re talking about people coming to Tobago who would normally play mas in Trinidad, Miami, Nottinghill, Caribana or Labor Day, these bigger carnivals around the world, to come. in Tobago and talk about the fact that they were embraced from Day One by the mass groups. So that means customer service was on point this weekend.
“We really infused our Tobago-ness into all aspects of the products.”
