JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, February 28, 2025

Magdalena goes back out to market

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
218 days ago
20240724

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored