Joel Julien

Deputy Head Of News Busi­ness

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Guest­house Opens 15th Branch

Grows in the Midst of a Pan­dem­ic

Ex­pert says Busi­ness Mod­el works in T&T

In March 2020, the Dou­ble Palm Inn, opened its 11th branch in this coun­try, lo­cat­ed at Pe­ters­field in Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas.

And while dur­ing the two-year pe­ri­od since then, many busi­ness­es have been strug­gling to keep their doors opened be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which ar­rived on this coun­try’s shores that same month, Dou­ble Palm has man­aged to open four more branch­es.

On Sat­ur­day, Dou­ble Palm opened its lat­est branch at Soledad Road in Clax­ton Bay.

That now brings their to­tal num­ber of branch­es to 15.

Since the pan­dem­ic Dou­ble Palm has al­so opened branch­es at Jasper Street in Diego Mar­tin, Rail­way Road in Princes Town, and Tumpuna Road South, Ari­ma.

The Tumpuna Road South branch is less that a kilo­me­tre away from their Tumpuna Road North branch.

A To­ba­go branch is said to be cur­rent­ly in the works.

The largest Dou­ble Palm Inn is lo­cat­ed along Man­zanil­la Road in Ma­yaro and was opened in March 2019.

That branch is said to have 30 rooms spread even­ly be­tween up­stairs and down­stairs.

Dou­ble Palm of­fers hourly rates rang­ing from $150 for two hours to $600 for 24 hours.

All lo­ca­tions are opened 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­nies reg­istry on­line search fa­cil­i­ty on the Le­gal Af­fairs web­site Dou­ble Palm Inn was in­cor­po­rat­ed on 5 Au­gust, 2019.

The com­pa­ny’s ad­dress is list­ed as Der­rick Road, Chase Vil­lage Ch­agua­nas.

Pre­vi­ous­ly Dou­ble Palm Guest House had been in­cor­po­rat­ed on Ju­ly 31, 2017.

But that com­pa­ny was even­tu­al­ly struck off.

The T&T Gazette dat­ed De­cem­ber 6, 2019 named Dou­ble Palm Guest House in a no­tice of in­tend­ed re­moval of de­funct com­pa­nies from reg­is­ter pur­suant to Sec­tion 461(3) of the Com­pa­nies Act, 1995, Chap. 81:01.

No­tice is here­by giv­en that at the ex­pi­ra­tion of three months from the date of this no­tice the names of the com­pa­nies ap­pear­ing here­un­der will, un­less cause is shown to the con­trary, be struck off the Reg­is­ter of Com­pa­nies kept at this of­fice, and the Com­pa­nies will be dis­solved, it stat­ed.

The no­tice was dat­ed Oc­to­ber 24, 2019 by Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al Karen Bridge­wa­ter.

Dou­ble Palm is owned by Guyanese-born busi­ness­man Ra­jen­dra Maye.

Maye is al­so the own­er of R Maye Hard­ware and Su­per­store Com­pa­ny which was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2016 and has the same ad­dress as Dou­ble Palm Inn.

R Maye hard­ware has two lo­ca­tions Chase Vil­lage and Arou­ca.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, Maye al­so had a grand open­ing for a 39-room ho­tel lo­cat­ed at Farm Road, Arou­ca called Pi­ar­co Palace.

In ad­di­tion to rooms Pi­ar­co Palace al­so has a restau­rant and bar. It al­so of­fers air­port shut­tle and taxi ser­vices.

The Busi­ness Guardian at­tempt­ed to speak to Maye sev­er­al times to dis­cuss the rise of Dou­ble Palm but he was un­avail­able for in­ter­view.

Over the years, the brand name Dou­ble Palm has be­come pop­u­lar lo­cal­ly and has been used as a gener­ic term, or a pro­pri­etary eponym to re­fer to guest hous­es in gen­er­al. The com­pa­ny has fea­tured in songs and mu­sic videos.

Even dur­ing the na­tion­wide black­out ear­li­er this month users took to so­cial me­dia to jok­ing­ly ask if Dou­ble Palm had a gen­er­a­tor.

Busi­ness­man and sex ther­a­pist Giri­raj “Dr Raj” Ram­nanan sought to ex­plain the at­trac­tion to guest hous­es in gen­er­al and Dou­ble Palm in par­tic­u­lar.

“It is a flour­ish­ing in­dus­try. And over time, a brand can be so fa­mous and so ubiq­ui­tous that peo­ple as­so­ciate that with the ac­tion,” Ram­nanan said.

In a post last year Dou­ble Palm not­ed that it had be­come the pre­ferred guest house.

“Man­age­ment and staff would like to of­fer our sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude for your sup­port in mak­ing us your pre­ferred choice of stay. We would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­as­sure you that Dou­ble Palm Inn will con­tin­ue to not just pro­vide the high­est stan­dard of ser­vice, but to al­so make sure your time spent at all of our es­tab­lished lo­ca­tions are safe and se­cure,” Dou­ble Palm stat­ed.

And im­i­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery.

“There has been an ad cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia claim­ing Dou­ble Palm Inn will be open­ing re­sorts along the Saly­bia/Matu­ra area. We at Dou­ble Palm Inn would like to in­form you that the ad is FALSE and is no way af­fil­i­at­ed with our busi­ness,” Dou­ble Palm post­ed last April.

Ram­nanan said guest hous­es are “noth­ing new” in this coun­try.

“All over the coun­try has hole- in-the-wall guest hous­es but now you have es­tab­lished guest hous­es like Dou­ble Palm who cater for per­sons who are look­ing for a ren­dezvous.

“Let’s put things in per­spec­tive. Trinidad so­ci­ety likes this kind of clan­des­tine kind of move­ment. So we are al­ways tief­ing a chance whether you are tief­ing a chance in a park­ing lot or you are tief­ing a chance in a fete when you jam some­body against a wall. It is all the same thing,” Ram­nanan said.

Ram­nanan said there is a guest house named Par­adise which has been op­po­site Rien­zi Com­plex as long as he has known him­self.

“Any where you turn they have these things you know. It is just that now you have en­ter­pris­ing busi­ness­men who de­cide they are go­ing to open a chain of these things all over the coun­try and they are thriv­ing,” he said.

“If you have some­body com­ing to use your place for a cou­ple of hours and they are pay­ing you $350 that is US$50 and it costs you noth­ing. You can turn over one room three or four times for the day,” Ram­nanan said.

Ram­nanan said prop­er san­i­ta­tion mea­sures have to be un­der­tak­en es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this time of the pan­dem­ic.

Dou­ble Palm has stat­ed that their rooms are “thor­ough­ly cleaned and sani­tised af­ter every cus­tomer.”

Ram­nanan be­lieves ris­ing crime in this coun­try has helped Dou­ble Palm since it of­fers a lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty for hook ups.

Dou­ble Palm’s rooms have elec­tron­ic garage doors and se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras.

“I will al­ways ad­vise some­body to go to a le­git­i­mate place where you could park your car safe­ly, where you could go in the room and lock your door. Where you don’t have to wor­ry if some­body is record­ing you, or spy­ing on you. Where you don’t have to wor­ry about be­ing seen. I am al­ways an ad­vo­cate for that. You can’t tell peo­ple not to do these things. So what I will tell them is to pro­tect them­selves,” Ram­nanan said.

Ram­nanan said guest hous­es al­so pro­vide em­ploy­ment.

Dou­ble Palm is cur­rent­ly look­ing for re­cep­tion­ists and house­keep­ers for its Soledad Road, Clax­ton Bay branch.

While Dou­ble Palm may have been see­ing reg­u­lar vis­i­tors, ho­tels across this coun­try are fac­ing chal­lenges in get­ting their oc­cu­pan­cy rates up.

In De­cem­ber, the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Has­sel Thom said the en­tire tourism val­ue chain had suf­fered through a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year that for many, saw the in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders closed to reg­u­lar com­mer­cial trav­el for 198 days.

“Ho­tels that did not sub­scribe to state-su­per­vised quar­an­tine type op­er­a­tion and chose to cater to the lo­cal mar­ket (stay­ca­tions) soon re­alised that this tar­get mar­ket was an non-vi­able op­tion and would have sub­se­quent­ly opt­ed to tem­porar­i­ly close to the pub­lic, as it was more cost­ly to re­main open and op­er­ate on sin­gle dig­it oc­cu­pan­cy cou­pled with low­er night­ly room rates,” Thom said.

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