Carnival is considered one of the key pillars of the T&T economy and a key source of foreign exchange earnings, therefore it must be managed as an industry and not an event.
That’s the revelation from Dr. Keith Nurse, president of the College of Science Technology and Applied Arts T&T (COSTATT), during a panel discussion entitled “ Forex earning potential of T&T Carnival,” which was hosted by the Trade and Economic Department, University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, last Friday.
Nurse said a strategic assessment of the Carnival suggests that there are some key challenges and weaknesses that are not being addressed and in tandem, there are also key opportunities and strengths that are not being maximised.
Nurse said unfortunately the creative industries have never been considered an important part of T&T’s economy, which he attributed to the “resource curse.”
“We have in the case of T&T’s Carnival a particular asset that has already, for a long period, helped to diversify the economy. The question that we are faced with is to ask ourselves how can we elevate this. How can we take it to another level and how can we strengthen its capacity to generate new types of jobs, generate foreign exchange. I have been writing about the economics of T&T’s Carnival for more than two decades.”
He used a term called “festival tourism” and said activities like accommodation, travel and hospitality are important to capture.
“For example, what is the occupancy rate during Carnival? We know that most of the established hotels, guest houses, villas and now Airbnb. We have been averaging accommodation occupancy rates in excess of 90 per cent. We know that the earnings in terms of visitor arrivals peaks during this period.”
He said the second key area is the cultural industry and this generates both goods, services and intellectual property.
“There is calypso, rapso, chutney and a lot of genres associated with Carnival and they are all involved in exporting goods and services and intellectual property. There are related sectors like broadcasting, telecom, food and beverage, auto rentals, We all know that these things jump in terms of operations. There is also telecom as a lot of people coming in for Carnival, are using their phones to roam or they are buying SIM cards. Do we have any data on this? The answer is generally no. We have never been able to capture that data.”
Another point raised by Nurse was the possibility of reduced airlift on account of uncompetitive Caribbean tourism, rising crime, and insecurity which impacts negatively on tourism.
Outlining the weakness in the product, the economist said there is an erosion of aesthetic differentiation and cultural value of carnival arts, limited attention to audience needs and media considerations, and limited investment in Carnival arts development and training.
“Weak industrial, trade and export facilitation, weak documentation and economic measurement, ad-hoc management structures, governance & decision-making, lack of strategic management and strategic marketing. Also unfocussed business and corporate sponsorship strategy, indifferent governmental support and investment and un-coordinated institutional facilitation,” he highlighted.
Earlier on in his presentation Nurse said that T&T needs to view its Carnival as more than an event.
“That is why I focused more on an industry approach to it. If you look at it from an industry perspective then all of the artforms generated by the Carnival become part of the foreign exchange earnings associated with the Carnival. But they do not exist outside of that. If you win the Road March in T&T you can earn up to $2 to $3 million just in foreign gigs. So, you cannot disassociate the earnings of the cultural and creative sectors from the Carnival,” he said.
Although he said he agreed with everything Nurse said, economist Dr Terrence Farrell, who made a contribution from the floor during the question-and-answer segment said Carnival should be considered more than a product because of the way it evolved as a cultural artform.
However, he qualified that by saying it is a good step that it is being commercialised now.
“Carnival is not a product. It has never been a product. Carnival is our thing. Carnival never depended on tourists. We never started Carnival for tourists and we still don’t do it for tourists. If the tourists come, they come, if they don’t come, they don’t come. Carnival is our thing. It’s a cathartic thing. We have to understand what its origins are.
“You have a set of folks who are commercialising it such as Tribe and the different band and the all inclusives. They are commercialising it and I think they are doing a fantastic thing. Because they are transforming the Carnival into a series of events and products and are attracting people from all over the place. But Carnival in its essence is not just one product or one event.”
While other speakers like Nurse and economist Dr Anthony Gonzales spoke about the difficulty in obtaining data and measuring Carnival as an industry, Farrell said the reason for this is because T&T’s carnival is multifaceted.
“The difficulty that we are having is that we are trying to describe something that is really very different, very unique and it is not like any other industry. That is why it is so hard to measure.
“The Economic Advisory Board when Dr Keith Nurse was on and I was on, we had in fact started and attempted to start the process of getting the measurement about some of these aspects including importantly the social cost of Carnival. Carnival imposes some costs on the community which we need to take into account as economists if we wish to understand the overall economic impact of what is happening.”
Farrell also said that the Government can do much in promoting Carnival.
“This is where I think that the Government has fallen down on the job because the people who are in Government have focused on running Panorama competitions, running Calypso competitions and not thinking about the thing as Dr Nurse is saying as an industry and getting people who are commercially business minded and so on involved in the process to make it happen.
“That is where we falling down. I can use Artificial Intelligence, the 3-D technology from Google and when a cruise ship visitor comes, they put on a goggles and feel as if they are playing mas in Despers. Why are we not doing that?” Farrell asked.
(With reporting by
Andrea Perez-Sobers)