Grenada’s 2013 Carnival, celebrated under the theme ‘Sweet Steelpan Music, The Sound and Rhythm of Spice Mas’, was a major success, according to Minister for Tourism, Civil Aviation and Culture, the Hon. Alexandra Otway Noel.
In an interview with the GIS, the Minister expressed her satisfaction with the outcome of events and congratulated the different players involved in the organization and execution of successful 2013 Carnival Celebrations.
“We’re very pleased with what we’ve seen, we had a tremendous participation, not only from the perspective of the participants but also from the spectators. I would like to congratulate all the bands for their continued passion and creativity,” Minister Otway said.
“I think that all of the people who participated in the bands really enjoyed themselves. We want to thank the SpiceMas Corporation and the Staff of the Ministry of Tourism, Civil Aviation and Culture for their hard work to make Carnival 2013 a success.”
Grenada’s main national festival, which was held on August 12 and 13, put on a colourful display of the Grenadian culture with no major incidents being reported. The Minister said that she thanks the Royal Grenada Police Force and all the support services that contributed to making sure that the celebrations were safe.
Minister Otway Noel said that this season saw an influx in the number of visitors to the island and that in interacting with some of them she found that they were satisfied.
“We had many foreigners here for the season, we saw an increase in the number of persons visiting Grenada. All the flights to Grenada were completely full. The visitors contributed and participated and were really happy with what they saw. Everyone said that they thought that this Carnival was really outstanding. We were very pleased by seeing the amount of people that visited with us for this season.”
She said that the Carnival promotion that her Ministry carried out in Trinidad paid off greatly and was reflected in the number of Trinidadian visitors who came to Grenada by sea.
“The ferry came in with 312 passengers aboard, so obviously the efforts paid off. We got 15 media houses that came up from Trinidad and they recorded our entire Carnival, so we know that we will get a tremendous amount of exposure. We went and sought them and we are very pleased with the feedback we got from them because they were able to capture Carnival and show it to Trinidadians and maybe next year we’ll need more than one boat.”
Minister Otway Noel said that she and her team are already turning their thoughts to 2014 to plan for a bigger and better SpiceMas Celebration.
“We will do a post-mortem on the festival with various stakeholders as well as Ministry officials and people involved and make sure that we’re doing things better,” Minister Otway said.
“We want to tweak some of the events and maybe change some of the times so that they run a little more smoothly than they did this year, as we continue to strive for an even better SpiceMas 2014.”
GIS
