GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

T&T’s north coast will re­ceive a $70 mil­lion in­vest­ment as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Qualitech Ma­chin­ing Ser­vices Deep­ak Lall and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ramps Lo­gis­tics Shaun Ram­per­sad will be of­fer­ing a mod­ern, lux­u­ri­ous Mara­cas Bay ho­tel with a mul­ti­tude of unique fea­tures.

The ven­ture will not on­ly in­crease the coun­try’s room stock but will al­so cre­ate much-need­ed jobs and boost spin-off in­dus­tries such as events, small busi­ness and agri­cul­ture among oth­ers.

Sub­ject to statu­to­ry ap­provals con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in March this year and com­ple­tion should con­clude by the end of 2024.

But what led Lall and Ram­per­sad-well-known in the en­er­gy cir­cles-to ven­ture in­to the ho­tel and tourism sphere?

Lall told the Busi­ness Guardian he first spot­ted the Mara­cas Bay Ho­tel for sale in 2017 but the price was out of his range at that time.

A cou­ple of years af­ter while on a trip to North Deck, Mara­cas he again en­quired whether the prop­er­ty was still up for grabs.

And as luck would have it the list­ing was with­in his price range and he wast­ed no time in bring­ing his dream to fruition.

"Work­ing in en­er­gy for the past 14 years this is my first tourism project. I try to look at things holis­ti­cal­ly and try to di­ver­si­fy my in­vest­ment port­fo­lio. In my busi­ness, Qualitech, we are heav­i­ly in­to the en­er­gy sec­tor and be­ing a ser­vice busi­ness we thought Trinidad is in need of a prop­er tourist des­ti­na­tion and a ho­tel by the beach was there­fore, ide­al.

“This lo­ca­tion is per­fect be­cause it is the most pop­u­lar beach in Trinidad and again, as we are ac­cus­tomed with the ser­vice sec­tor and set­ting-up sys­tems this is not too far-fetched for us,” Lall ex­plained.

Not on­ly man­ag­ing peo­ple is im­por­tant but find­ing the right peo­ple is al­so in­te­gral.

Be­ing no stranger to Ram­per­sad, Lall said the busi­ness part­ner­ship came nat­u­ral­ly.

“I didn’t want to go in­to it by my­self so I se­lect­ed Shaun. We have sim­i­lar think­ing, sim­i­lar val­ues and sim­i­lar busi­ness in­ter­ests,” Lall added, not­ing that the 40-room prop­er­ty is well with­in their ca­pa­bil­i­ty to man­age.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he al­so viewed the deal as a nat­ur­al forex earn­er giv­en the crunch busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to face over the years.

“We thought this would be a new feed­er for US rev­enue or for­eign cur­ren­cy streams,” Lall fur­ther ex­plained.

But this ven­ture goes be­yond build­ing a world-class ho­tel and cre­at­ing a lo­cal brand.

It is al­so de­vel­op­ing the Mara­cas com­mu­ni­ty and by ex­ten­sion the coun­try’s pris­tine coast.

“Mara­cas has been the same over the years, just the up­grades with the ven­dors' huts but noth­ing re­al­ly ex­cit­ing. You see the de­vel­op­ment of Pi­geon Point; the ca­banas, the bars, the restau­rants, the ser­vice where you can or­der food and drinks and the golf carts that will come to you and we know Mara­cas has a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty for things like that,” Lall said.

For in­stance, he wants to cre­ate an “Oistins” en­vi­ron­ment with sump­tu­ous dish­es sim­i­lar to those found in for­eign coun­tries like Bar­ba­dos.

“We want to in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty as much as pos­si­ble. There are many fish­er­men on that side of the beach. Sim­i­lar to the Oistins where there are fish fry-ups we could set a day to have that at Mara­cas where there can be macro food ar­eas like those at Ed­die Hart (Sa­van­nah). That’s the kind of area and am­bi­ence we want to cre­ate,” Lall ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, farm-to-ta­ble will al­so be key as ob­tain­ing fresh pro­duce from near­by farm­ers will en­sure guests are al­ways served the best qual­i­ty in­gre­di­ents.

Apart from gen­er­at­ing jobs and boost­ing link­age in­dus­tries, it’s al­so about cre­at­ing nov­el ex­pe­ri­ences that the mod­ern-day trav­eller wants to em­brace.

“The prop­er­ty will stand on its own but the idea is to re­al­ly show­case what T&T has. We re­fer to Mara­cas as the gate­way to the north coast be­cause there’s Blan­chisseuse, Paria Bay etc. Tourists can an­chor them­selves at the ho­tel for prob­a­bly a week and do a num­ber of things like hik­ing or even check out the choco­lates in Bras­so Seco.

"They can al­so book a tour with the fish­er­men to go out on the fish­ing ves­sel. They can cast a net them­selves, pull the fish in; all these are ex­pe­ri­ences we want to cre­ate. These are what we want to of­fer to de­vel­op a holis­tic tourism prod­uct to show­case Trinidad’s finest,” Lall em­pha­sised.

Oth­er event of­fer­ings range from de­liv­er­ing drinks on the beach to host­ing wed­dings.

“Our fo­cus is al­so to de­vel­op the west side of Mara­cas which we think is un­der-utilised, from the riv­er head­ing to­wards the fish­ing jet­ty,” Lall said, em­pha­sis­ing that qual­i­ty cus­tomer ser­vice will be in­te­gral to the ho­tel's core vi­sion.

While the tar­get mar­ket will be for­eign­ers Lall be­lieves there’s huge po­ten­tial for do­mes­tic tourism as well.

"We don’t an­tic­i­pate hav­ing prob­lems get­ting a book­ing for the week­ends for in­stance. I am very op­ti­mistic. Com­pa­nies have re­treats with their em­ploy­ees and they go to To­ba­go, they go to an­oth­er is­land so why not do that in Trinidad at Mara­cas?

"They can bring their fam­i­lies who can en­joy them­selves on the beach while they go to their cor­po­rate meet­ings so hope­ful­ly that will take up a lot of the slack dur­ing the week,” Lall added.

Con­fi­dent there will be smooth sail­ing in en­sur­ing the project is brought to fruition he al­so praised key stake­hold­ers for their ef­forts in­clud­ing Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell as well as the T&T Tourism Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Ltd (TT­TB­DL) which Lall said have cer­tain guar­an­tees which can help in ob­tain­ing a por­tion of the fi­nanc­ing need­ed for con­struc­tion.

He al­so de­tailed that Trinidad Tourism Ltd al­so as­sist­ed in du­ty-free ex­emp­tions on im­port­ed items and pro­vid­ed valu­able in­sight in­to the lo­cal ho­tel in­dus­try.

"In­vesTT al­so helped con­nect us with all the lo­cal stake­hold­ers and fol­low up on ap­pli­ca­tions, ap­provals etc," he added, not­ing the ho­tel was not a cash in­vest­ment but was achieved via work­ing with the bank.

"I be­lieve in do­ing projects that will be suc­cess­ful and with­in my reach. One the en­tire coun­try will ben­e­fit from," Lall added.