Tourism Trinidad partners with CarniCon

Tourism Trinidad Limited (TTL) announced on the weekened a strategic partnership with CarniCon to produce the first ever Global Carnival convention involving international festival practitioners and stakeholders to explore the big business that is Carnival.

CarniCon will take place in November 2020 in the birthplace of Carnival – Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking at the launch, at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), Howard Chin Lee, chairman of Tourism Trinidad explained that “CarniCon is in keeping with Tourism Trinidad’s strategic thrust toward developing our event tourism niche, increasing arrivals, driving higher hotel occupancy and marketing Destination Trinidad.”

Citing the example of the founder of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs, Chin Lee remarked that Jobs “believed that creativity was about continuously challenging the thinking behind what exists now and what it has the potential to become.” CarniCon, Chin Lee said, mirrors this type of creative and innovative thinking and represents a bold step in the right direction in redefining our Carnival. “As the saying goes, it only takes a spark to kindle a great fire.” Tourism Trinidad envisions that CarniCon will enable the creation of strong business networks to share important advances in the carnival industry, leverage the strength of the world’s leading brands in entertainment, and explore opportunities for economic gains through joint ventures or direct business tourism inflows. This, in turn, can drive year-long travel and business revenue to our shores.

A business to business event, CarniCon is the brainchild of a group of Trinidad and Tobago professionals – Derrick Lewis, Dean Ackin, Jules Sobion and Jamie Stewart of Commune Sports and Entertainment.Marketing guru Bonin Bough, the headline speaker at the CarniCon launch, delivered a thought provoking and dramatic message about disrupting and reinventing your brand to appeal to the new millennium - punctuating the need to innovate, or be left behind.

Moderated by Dr Jo-Ann Tull, one of the foremost Caribbean researchers in the festival arts sector, the launch panel discussion involving artist Wendell Manwarren and Alex Johnston a digital entrepreneur, explored the commercialisation of Carnival and leveraging Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival on an international platform.