Raphael John-Lall

If you are a busi­ness own­er in T&T, but are hav­ing prob­lems ac­cess­ing high-lev­el meet­ing spaces, you now have the op­tion of us­ing the hy­brid busi­ness suite at the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites in St. Ann’s.

Own­er of the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites, Ra­jiv Shandilya said this new prod­uct is tai­lored to new busi­ness clients or dig­i­tal no­mads.

Shandilya said the hy­brid busi­ness suite is the first of its kind with­in the lo­cal ho­tel in­dus­try and he said once again the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel has cre­at­ed an in­no­va­tion for the new trend­ing trav­el­er.

“Com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a num­ber of busi­ness­es ceased to op­er­ate from of­fices that they tra­di­tion­al­ly had. “Sev­er­al com­pa­nies have closed, and they have de­cid­ed to have their work­ers work from home. As a re­sult of that and with the down­turn of the econ­o­my and with the ho­tel and tourism in­dus­try on the de­cline in T&T, the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites made a strate­gic move to de­vel­op these hy­brid busi­ness suites, which took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the de­mand of peo­ple who now op­er­ate from their homes and need to have an of­fice in Port-of-Spain,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian last Tues­day.

The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel now has six of these hy­brid busi­ness suites that are spe­cial­ly tai­lored for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

He ex­plained how these new rooms have been de­vel­oped.

“The hy­brid busi­ness suite comes with an en­suite bed­room with a pri­vate liv­ing room, a con­nect­ing door to its own meet­ing/board­room. It gives not on­ly ac­com­mo­da­tion that the busi­nessper­son can ac­cess im­me­di­ate­ly from their park­ing to their ac­com­mo­da­tion, but a full con­fer­ence room for a small meet­ing of up to eight per­sons. This is al­so safe as they don’t have to com­mute late at night. They can stay in the busi­ness suite with an en­suite bed­room.”

He added that the busi­ness suite comes with high speed in­ter­net and is equipped with a pre­sen­ta­tion screen for wire­less cast­ing for meet­ings. Al­so part of the ho­tel’s pack­age is a mul­ti­func­tion print­er with copi­er for seam­less op­er­a­tions, which is com­pli­ment­ed with a cof­fee sta­tion and re­frig­er­at­ed bev­er­ages.

Prices for these suites start at US$250 a day and are cus­tomis­able to the needs of clients. The meet­ing rooms are al­so avail­able sep­a­rate­ly start­ing at US$150 a day.

More sup­port need­ed

Shandilya would like the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide sup­port to ho­tels like his own.

“The true essence of Caribbean hos­pi­tal­i­ty is in the in­dige­nous lo­cal of­fer­ing, not on­ly for the va­ri­ety of lo­cal dish­es, but al­so in ac­com­mo­da­tion type. That is the nec­tar of au­then­tic T&T and Caribbean hos­pi­tal­i­ty. It will great­ly be ap­pre­ci­at­ed if the Gov­ern­ment and state boards--as the largest cus­tomers in tourism busi­ness for the small­er, in­de­pen­dent brand­ed prop­er­ties like--pro­vide pa­tron­age for events, ac­com­mo­da­tion and pro­mo­tions of the scale from 30 to un­der 200 per­sons. “Small events and ac­com­mo­da­tion can cer­tain­ly be housed and host­ed more eco­nom­i­cal­ly than the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with large in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed prop­er­ties. This will im­pact sig­nif­i­cant­ly to sus­tain and grow our Brand T&T. We need your sup­port.”

He said it is un­for­tu­nate that Trinidad Tourism brand­ing and mar­ket­ing is geared to­ward the in­ter­na­tion­al brands, which is iron­ic when they speak about sup­port­ing the lo­cal in­dus­tries.

“We have been work­ing on our mar­ket­ing to at­tract the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on our own, which is a very ex­pen­sive ex­er­cise. The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites has de­vel­oped its own lo­cal brand, stan­dards and cul­ture that is su­pe­ri­or and strong in lo­cal art and in fur­nish­ings made from lo­cal teak and syp.”

He said the ho­tel’s food is sourced di­rect­ly from lo­cal fish­er­men with fresh pro­duce from Ma­coya mar­ket.

“We can be matched against any in­ter­na­tion­al brand,” said Shandilya.

He con­clud­ed by say­ing he re­mains com­mit­ted to the ho­tel in­dus­try and T&T’s tourism in­dus­try.

“When I say we, my staff and I, we have a lo­cal brand and are com­mit­ted to the in­dus­try. The suc­cess of Trinidad Tourism Ltd is how ef­fec­tive they can mar­ket the is­land en­tre­pre­neurs in the tourism sec­tor to the lo­cal mar­ket and to the world. I can on­ly hope there is a dy­nam­ic shift just as Ba­jan and Ja­maicans, who mar­ket their unique is­land of­fer­ings.”

His­to­ry

Shandilya said the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel opened its doors in June 1999, in­tro­duc­ing a new con­cept of a bou­tique prop­er­ty as a small lux­u­ry ho­tel to Trinidad.

"It was the first ho­tel to be opened in al­most 10 years with full in­ter­net ser­vices in wired net­work ser­vices in each room di­rect­ed to the busi­ness clien­tele from the en­er­gy sec­tor. Ma­jor oil and gas ex­ec­u­tives such as BP, At­lantic LNG , Bak­er Hugh­es were al­so our cus­tomers as we met with all the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards."

He said in its first ten years , the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel sus­tained an oc­cu­pan­cy av­er­aged at 85 per cent.

"It was on­ly when the large ho­tel chains bring­ing 465 rooms with larg­er fa­cil­i­ties did we see a de­cline in oc­cu­pan­cy. Ma­jor­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment and state boards di­vert­ed al­most all their busi­ness, which we tra­di­tion­al­ly host­ed. Post pan­dem­ic we looked at the mar­ket and the dy­nam­ics and once again we thought it best to meet with the in­ter­na­tion­al trends. We cre­at­ed the new con­cept of Hy­brid Busi­ness Suite and re­brand­ed as The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites.

He al­so said that busi­ness is al­so chal­lenged as there has been a shift of the oil and gas sec­tor to Guyana, which has brought about a short­er stay as com­pared to the week stay to just "over nighters."

He added that oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els have been con­strained as well as crime which dri­ves tourism to al­ter­nate des­ti­na­tions.

"There is still much busi­ness in Port-of-Spain as a cap­i­tal, how­ev­er the Gov­ern­ment is the ma­jor eco­nom­ic dri­ver who can em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­crease the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in which oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els and small meet­ings and events chan­nelled to small­er prop­er­ties of at In­ter­na­tion­al class such as the Chan­cel­lor can host and be­come more prof­itable and ex­pand through­out the re­gion as a true Trinidad brand em­bell­ish­ing the Caribbean brand based on qual­i­ty busi­ness tourism."