An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The re­quest for pro­pos­al (RFP) for Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in To­ba­go is be­ing re­vised.

This was con­firmed by an of­fi­cial from Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (eTecK), who said the com­pa­ny is in the process of reis­su­ing the RFP.

Asked why this move and if it was be­cause of a lack of in­ter­est from suit­ably qual­i­fied, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed op­er­a­tors/in­vestors/pur­chasers, the of­fi­cial said while there was in­ter­est, af­ter in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions eTeck saw it nec­es­sary to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to achieve the de­sired re­sults.

In April 2022, the 178-room ho­tel in Low­lands was up for grabs again.

Back in Oc­to­ber 2019, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment was in talks with Unit­ed States-based trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty con­glom­er­ate Ap­ple Leisure Group to take over the op­er­a­tor­ship of Mag­dale­na Grand.

Ap­ple Leisure Group is the par­ent of re­sort and brand man­age­ment com­pa­ny AM­Re­sorts and its loy­al­ty pro­gramme, Un­lim­it­ed Va­ca­tion Club.

The deal, how­ev­er, did not pan out for rea­sons not pub­licly stat­ed.

Price Struc­ture needs to change

Own­er of Le Voy­age Ho­tels and Re­sorts in Flori­da and CEO and Founder of The Any­thing Group (TAG), Rich Tuck­well-Sku­da, who works with sev­er­al ho­tel chains glob­al­ly, said one of the is­sues that is block­ing the sale of the Mag­dale­na is the pric­ing of the re­sort.

Tuck­well-Sku­da told Busi­ness Guardian that when putting up a re­sort for sale many fac­tors have to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion such as the age of the prop­er­ty and the amount of in­fra­struc­ture work the buy­er has to do along with pur­chas­ing the prop­er­ty.

He not­ed that his com­pa­ny, which al­so con­structs ho­tels and as­sists op­er­a­tors in ac­quir­ing re­sorts, knows how im­por­tant it is not to price one’s self out of the mar­ket.

“The ho­tel in­dus­try is a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket and when sell­ing or look­ing for par­tial own­er­ship all de­tails must be prop­er­ly stat­ed in the doc­u­ments such as debts,” the busi­ness­man said.

Missed op­por­tu­ni­ty with San­dals?

When asked if To­ba­go missed the op­por­tu­ni­ty with San­dals Re­sort In­ter­na­tion­al to build a prop­er­ty on the is­land, Tuck­well-Sku­da quick­ly said no.  

While he in­di­cat­ed that San­dals is a great brand, it can­not make or break an is­land.

“Look at Turks and Caicos with Ritz Carl­ton that was sup­posed to be built in the 2000s, they took a whole is­land, and it was sup­posed to be a big lux­u­ry ho­tel, but it nev­er ma­te­ri­alised as it went bank­rupt dur­ing the process. This did not af­fect Turks and Caicos; they just moved on,” he ex­plained.

The ho­tel own­er out­lined that San­dals is a Caribbean sta­ple, but a coun­try can­not hang its hat on one brand.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, San­dals pulled out of de­vel­op­ment on the is­land, due to too much neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty.

San­dal’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Geb­hard Rain­er at a news con­fer­ence back then said that the Ja­maican owned re­sort com­pa­ny re­ceived con­stant and on­go­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty over the pre­vi­ous two and a half years since the in­cep­tion of the project and added that the re­ports could have even­tu­al­ly hurt its brand.

Many stake­hold­ers were up in arms with San­dals com­ing on the is­land.

Fix­ing cus­tomer ser­vice

There is al­ways the com­plaint that cus­tomer ser­vice at many Caribbean ho­tels is not up to par. Tuck­well-Sku­da said that this is where his com­pa­ny comes in­to play by train­ing the staff to en­sure that cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence is al­ways 100 per cent.

“One bad ex­pe­ri­ence can hurt the ho­tel’s brand and with the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, it can de­stroy the ho­tel’s im­age for a very long time. I have fall­en vic­tim to bad ser­vice at a ho­tel in the re­gion and no prop­er re­dress was done.  It was an aw­ful ex­pe­ri­ence and that is why man­age­ment needs to in­vest in prop­er train­ing, as in turn tourists will con­tin­ue to re­vis­it the prop­er­ty,” he high­light­ed.

Talk­ing about the pos­i­tive re­sults his com­pa­ny TAG has been able to achieve, Tuck­well-Sku­da said his team is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing tech­ni­cal so­lu­tions and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing for more than 250 clients world­wide, achiev­ing in­creas­es in prof­itabil­i­ty, rev­enue, op­er­a­tional best prac­tices, and mar­ket­ing ROAS (Re­turn on Ad Spend), whilst de­creas­ing op­er­a­tional ex­pen­di­ture, neg­a­tive re­views and mar­ket­ing costs.

The com­pa­ny al­so re­brand­ed and re­designed the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA)  web­site in May.

He said this show­cas­es a fresh aes­thet­ic and a user-friend­ly web­site de­signed to cap­ture the al­lure of the Caribbean and there is a high­er en­gage­ment on the web­site from peo­ple look­ing for ho­tels to vis­it.

Asked whether he was able to move a two-star ho­tel to a four-star ho­tel Tuck­well-Sku­da chuck­led and said “It’s my spe­cial­ty. In the last four years, I’ve shift­ed four ho­tels, up­scal­ing them to four-star ho­tels for clients.

We have built ten ho­tels in the last five years for clients. We have de­flagged. So one of the things we do in a big way is de­flag­ging and re­flag­ging.

He con­tin­ued “Some­body may have an old un­der­per­form­ing Hilton that they’ve bought, and they want to turn that from be­ing an old un­der­per­form­ing Hilton in­to a new lux­u­ry des­ti­na­tion prop­er­ty. That is one of the big things we do a lot. So, we have three of those un­der con­struc­tion at the mo­ment.”

The ho­tel own­er not­ed the com­pa­ny is al­so in­volved in the con­struc­tion of sev­er­al ho­tels in Ja­maica, which he could not dis­close at this time.

Fur­ther, he said that 20 per cent of his clien­tele are from the Caribbean.

In terms of ho­tels that have worked with the com­pa­ny, the busi­ness­man said rev­enue has in­creased by 300 per cent for some ho­tels, as the book­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and telling the truth about what the ho­tel of­fers is the spe­cial­i­ty of the com­pa­ny.

“So when we work with a client on dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing,  spend­ing nor­mal­ly quadru­ples. What we nor­mal­ly tend to find is a prop­er­ty that comes to us, from a cur­rent agency that is maybe spend­ing US$3,000 a month and get­ting US$30,000 a month, that is not get­ting the re­sults that it wants. When they come to us we might spend US1,500, but we will net US65,000 for that. So, rev­enue in­creas­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Ob­vi­ous­ly, in line with rev­enue, in­creas­ing oc­cu­pan­cy goes up be­cause we have twin struc­tures.

Our goal when we bring a new client on is al­ways to get them to a point where they are at least sit­ting at an av­er­age of 85 to 90 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy,” he added.