Remember the pods from February’s A Taste of Carnival? Well, they’re back. This time, it’s not to satisfy the requirements of social distancing but an earning opportunity, National Carnival Commission (NCC) chairman Winston “Gypsy” Peters said.
It’s one of the changes the NCC is planning for the “Mother of All Carnivals” in 2023. Carnival Monday and Tuesday will be on February 20 and 21 next year.
Pods – small platforms to hold groups of audience members – were introduced this year to ensure people maintained social distance because of the covid19 pandemic. The NCC said they were successful.
[caption id="attachment_985991" align="alignnone" width="1024"] K2K Alliance and Partners portraying The Greatest Show (Welcome to The Circle) at the Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain on February 25, 2020. File photo/ Jeff K Mayers[/caption]
Peters said: “People gravitated to it in such a beautiful way that we would want to put a couple of them. We do have people that come in with ten-15 people.
“We are putting it there solely for economic purposes. There will be people who will come and buy a pod because they want to be there with their people. They are in the event, but have a certain amount of privacy.”
These measures, along with the fact that Carnival has not been held for two years, will bring in even more revenue for Trinidad and Tobago, he estimates.
Taxis, hotels and shops all benefit from the business Carnival generates. This then goes back into doing the country’s business, he said. Carnival usually makes in excess of $1 billion.
“We can see from the things we have been doing from outside of the country, people are anxious to come in.”
As Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Randall Mitchell said at the launch of Carnival on November 5, he reminded, “The hotels are just about booked up, the hotels are filled, and that is a great indication that we have a lot of people coming into the country.”
Many bands are almost sold out, he added, stressing: “The NCC does not make money for itself. The NCC makes money for the country. Carnival does not make money for the NCC. It makes money for the exchequer.”
Peters said while the commission would have liked more than $200 million for the “Mother of All Carnivals,” it will make do with the allocation of $146 million, and some will be spent on promoting Carnival in a big way.
“The more promotion we do with TT’s Carnival, is the more people we get to come in to TT...The foreign money that they bring to the country is spent in every aspect of TT’s life, starting with buying the plane ticket. The Government makes money from that, as strange as it may sound,” he said.
[caption id="attachment_985986" align="alignnone" width="732"] National Carnival Commission (NCC) chairman Winston “Gypsy” Peters. Photo by Sureash Cholai[/caption]
In 2018, the commission set and attained a goal of a ten per cent increase in visitors, he said. However, as it was aiming for a 20 per cent increase, the pandemic happened. It is now aiming to rebuild.
“Thank God, TT’s
