GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Kent In­vest­ments (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed has been se­lect­ed to man­age, mar­ket, and op­er­ate the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) ho­tel that has bare­ly been used since the open­ing of NA­PA in 2009.

The NA­PA ho­tel, housed with­in the north­ern wing of the acad­e­my’s ar­chi­tec­tur­al land­mark in Port-of-Spain, com­pris­es 53 rooms, in­clud­ing lux­u­ry suites with sweep­ing views of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

The ho­tel’s main ac­cess point on Chancery Lane leads in­to a spa­cious hall­way or lob­by area with front desk fa­cil­i­ties, lounge and ad­min­is­tra­tive spaces.

The 53 rooms are dis­trib­uted among five floors with each floor con­tain­ing a suite.

Each room has a view of the sa­van­nah.

The fa­cil­i­ties al­so pro­vide stor­age space, safe­ty sys­tems, el­e­va­tors and util­i­ty shafts.

There is al­so ac­cess to a park­ing area in the base­ment via el­e­va­tor.

Since in­cep­tion, the ho­tel has been used to fa­cil­i­tate spe­cif­ic vis­its and/or events and was nev­er ful­ly utilised.

The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts said the op­er­a­tion of the NA­PA ho­tel is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue for the state over five years, in­clud­ing to­tal pro­ject­ed tax con­tri­bu­tions of $22.6 mil­lion.

In giv­ing a break­down of the fig­ures, the min­istry ex­plained that rev­enue from ho­tel room tax­es and VAT is ex­pect­ed to amount to $17.6 mil­lion while VAT, PAYE, busi­ness levy, green fund levy, and health sur­charge are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate $5 mil­lion.

This was an­nounced at the of­fi­cial sign­ing of a heads of agree­ment be­tween NA­PA and Kent In­vest­ments.

The min­istry said this mile­stone was part of the gov­ern­ment’s strate­gic ef­fort to ad­vance in­to pro­duc­tive use of the pre­mier rev­enue gen­er­at­ing State as­set and reaf­firm its com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing the tourism and cul­tur­al sec­tors in T&T.

The min­istry ex­plained that the up­grad­ing and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the NA­PA ho­tel re­quired an es­ti­mat­ed in­vest­ment of $16 mil­lion, in­clud­ing up­grades to ICT in­fra­struc­ture, guest rooms and ameni­ties such as a new bar and en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty, as well as the pro­cure­ment of op­er­at­ing sup­plies and equip­ment, in­clud­ing items like cut­lery, linens and oth­er es­sen­tial op­er­a­tional goods.

It said Kent In­vest­ments would al­so in­ject $5.6 mil­lion in cap­i­tal to­wards these up­grades.

Per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment is al­so ex­pect­ed to be cre­at­ed for 73 peo­ple when the ho­tel be­comes ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ho­tel is poised to de­liv­er tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to the do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors through back­ward link­ages.

Fresh pro­duce, meats, dairy and oth­er per­ish­ables will be sourced di­rect­ly from lo­cal farm­ers, en­sur­ing con­sis­tent de­mand and sup­port­ing liveli­hoods, the min­istry said.

It added this would range from the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, not­ing that the ho­tel would pro­cure a wide range of lo­cal­ly made prod­ucts in­clud­ing toi­letries, clean­ing sup­plies, pack­aged snacks, bot­tled bev­er­ages, linens, uni­forms, fur­ni­ture, and dec­o­ra­tive items.

These back­ward link­ages not on­ly pro­mote lo­cal pro­duc­tion but al­so en­cour­age val­ue-added process­es and job cre­ation across mul­ti­ple in­dus­tries, the min­istry stat­ed.

“Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the ho­tel will gen­er­ate for­ward link­ages by at­tract­ing vis­i­tors whose spend­ing will ben­e­fit near­by restau­rants, tour op­er­a­tors, ar­ti­sans, and trans­porta­tion ser­vices,” the min­istry added.

In com­ment­ing on the move Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts said, “This part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a strate­gic ad­vance­ment in the man­age­ment of state-owned hos­pi­tal­i­ty as­sets. Through this ini­tia­tive, we are cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, fos­ter­ing tourism de­vel­op­ment, and el­e­vat­ing the stan­dard of hos­pi­tal­i­ty in the cap­i­tal city.”

In De­cem­ber 2023, the Cab­i­net ap­proved the is­suance of a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) for the op­er­a­tion of the NA­PA Ho­tel.

The RFP was is­sued in March 2024 and closed in June 2024, invit­ing pro­pos­als from qual­i­fied en­ti­ties with a demon­strat­ed track record in ho­tel man­age­ment.

The min­istry said six prospec­tive pro­po­nents ex­pressed an in­ter­est and at­tend­ed the manda­to­ry site vis­it, adding that two sub­mis­sions were re­ceived, with Kent In­vest­ments emerg­ing as the top-ranked bid­der.

The min­istry ex­plained that Kent In­vest­ments would serve as the op­er­a­tor, while NA­PA re­tains own­er­ship.

“This mod­el al­lows for pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment ex­per­tise to be lever­aged, max­imis­ing both the com­mer­cial po­ten­tial and guest ex­pe­ri­ence at the prop­er­ty,” the min­istry added.

It not­ed the ini­tial term of the Ho­tel Man­age­ment Agree­ment (HMA) would be fis­cal years, with the op­tion to re­new for sub­se­quent five-year pe­ri­ods.

Kent In­vest­ments (Trinidad) Ltd op­er­ates un­der the brand name Cara Ho­tels. Its flag­ship prop­er­ty, Cara Suites Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, is lo­cat­ed in Clax­ton Bay.