In 2019 Carnival in Jamaica is projected to have raked in more than $1 billion as the event turned out to be the biggest staging ever.

Three years and three months later, after surviving multiple waves of the novel coronavirus and recurring uncertainty around entertainment events, Jamaican stakeholders were able to pull off a historic event.

Historic in more ways than one. Firstly because Carnival in Jamaica was staged in July, four months after its usual date.

But that didn’t prevent jerk vendors, taxi drivers, restaurants and hotels from cashing in on the usual festivities.

The initial reactions from both revellers and stakeholders is that the event was a success, with chairman of the Carnival in Jamaica Stakeholders Committee, Kamal Bankay, telling the Jamaica Observer that “Ultimately, it was not only good for the patrons and the organisers for us to stretch our legs, it was great for Jamaica.”

But even before completing a post-mortem of the event, stakeholders agree that the economic derivatives from carnival in Jamaica this year will likely be lower than pre-pandemic levels.

For Bankay, the silver lining is that Carnival in Jamaica 2022 became a reality. He said, “I know that there’s been a significant uptick for having carnival in July versus not having carnival at all, so that’s really what we look at.”

As for Michael Ammar Jr, the co-director of Bacchanal Jamaica, one of the two bands which participated in road march this year, the economic hurdles were many.

“It was a very challenging year because we did not get a lot of the corporate sponsorship in cash that we would have usually gotten, so we had to be very creative in funding the carnival and very, very careful in how we spend money,” Ammar Jr admitted.

He explained that the lack of cash sponsorship will likely continue into the summer events as many corporate sponsors are complaining they do not have the space in their budget.

“They weren’t ready for it because it wasn’t in their budget. These budgets would probably have been done like in the fourth quarter last year and at that point I would have remembered Jamaica was in the fourth wave that was just when Omicron was starting. So, I’m sure none of them really expected these huge events to come along this summer, there’s three of them, there’s carnival, Sumfest and Dream, so they had to kinda split the funds out of whatever was available,” the bacchanal director stated.

He noted that it’s still too early to say exactly what the losses are but indicated that there was additional expenses to deal with COVID sanitising, which he said wasn’t seen as optional.

Aside from that, he said the turnout was noticeably lower than the pre-pandemic levels.

“The band at carnival was a little smaller, it was about 80 per cent but that was expected because we knew some of the foreigners were not going to be able to come and they have indicated that to us and in fact we have given them the option of carrying their costume and their booking over to next year which they’ve taken,” Ammar Jr stated.

In the meantime, Scott Dunn who is managing director of Dream Entertainment, co-owners of Xodus Carnival, indicated that Xodus culminated the week of activities with 3,000+ revellers at its road march on Sunday.

Despite the drawbacks, Bankay said “it was great to be back out on the road, all the lead up fetes culminating in the road march were amazing, patron response was good, people were literally just so happy to have an opportunity to gather and be a part of something that they’ve loved for many many years and of course we were happy to provide them with a safe experience.”

“For Jamaica’s entertainment scene, this is our first major national festival and I feel that the world was looking and saw what we did. I know everybody is looking forward to the summer festivals now, from Sumfest to dream weekend, to grand gala our national celebrations for the 60th anniversary of our Independence, everybody is excited for those. Carnival kinda kicked it off and I think where we are now is a great place,” Bankay continued.

With regards to the economic out-turn Bankay maintained, “I think the stakeholders are comfortable, I can’t tell you exactly what the economic benefits for all the stakeholders are but I can tell you that the stakeholders are happy that we’re able to do events and based on the crowd sizes at events, I think everybody was comfortable.”

Similarly, Ammar Jr noted “we had one of the most successful bacchanal fete that we’ve had in a long time, we had four events and all of them were pretty much sold out. Overall I can’t complain.”

Carnival in Jamaica 2023 is already confirmed for April 16, 2023 and already stakeholders are anticipating a more robust recovery in terms of the economic returns.