ALL INCLUSIVE FETES

The rising levels of serious crimes in Trinidad and Tobago today, including murders, kidnappings and armed hold-ups, have provoked an across-the-board need for safety and have encouraged the spawning of a wave of all-inclusive Carnival fetes. The market is there and entrepreneurs have cashed in on it, offering virtually unlimited supplies of all the food and drink the average fete-going person can consume. In turn, there is the added facility of an ample number of security guards at the various functions and with this the customer’s or would be customer’s confidence in the guaranteeing of his/her safety. A welcome plus to some is the provision of secured parking.

Promoters are charging from what is considered a low fee for all-inclusives in the context of today’s market, $175, while many of the more exclusive go as high as $350 to $425, with some yet higher. The all-inclusive Carnival party works on the assumption that persons prefer to attend parties where the individuals they are likely to meet can be reasonably expected not to be prone to violence, and certainly not banditry. It is a mindset born of mind conditioning triggered by the uncomfortable rise in the murder rate and in kidnappings, along with other outrageous examples of out and out banditry. Promoters then, many of them taking advantage of today’s social climate, market assurance in exchange for relatively high entrance fees to fetes. There was a time when the popular all- inclusives were the annual Blood Bank Carnival fete, which in earlier years attracted an entrance fee of $40, and the monthly rum punch party hosted by the now defunct Trinidad Press Club. Astonishingly, the Press Club’s rum punch party had an entrance fee of all of three dollars, and with it, patrons, most of them senior media personnel and members of the Diplomatic Corps, received rum punch, rum and coke and ham and hops and/or bulljoll, and sometimes depending at whose home the party was held, clearly subsidised Scotch whisky and French wine and a variety of snacks.

Yet even some house parties with specially invited guests can have their problems, as was seen only on Sunday, January 18, when a teenager was reportedly stabbed to death at one such party in Arima because a friend of his had allegedly danced with someone else’s girlfriend. In addition, fights have all too often broken out, and pickpocketing a popular pastime, at some of the more packed public fetes. Incidents such as fights, pickpocketing and the stealing of cars by other patrons at public fetes have acted as powerful, though unfortunate and unsought, and clearly unwanted marketing tools for the many all- inclusive fetes dotting this year’s Carnival landscape.