PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel was of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly from the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (Ude­cott) yes­ter­day, but the THA is al­ready look­ing for a new own­er for the ho­tel.

De­spite the han­dover, Au­gus­tine con­firmed that the THA was not in­ter­est­ed in man­ag­ing the ho­tel.

“The THA is not con­sid­er­ing run­ning the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of a ho­tel. The THA has no ex­pe­ri­ence in run­ning the ho­tel’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions,” Au­gus­tine stat­ed.

Au­gus­tine con­firmed that over $27 mil­lion had been spent on the ho­tel, with $11 mil­lion spent on the ho­tel be­tween 2015 and 2020 pri­or to Ude­cott tak­ing over the project.

In­stead, he said the THA would seek pro­pos­als con­cern­ing the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the ho­tel and dive cen­tre.

Au­gus­tine said he would seek an arrange­ment sim­i­lar to that cur­rent­ly utilised by the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort, which while be­ing state-owned is man­aged by pri­vate op­er­a­tors.

The Man­ta Lodge, along with Sanc­tu­ary Vil­las in Black Rock, had been a long-run­ning blot on the page of the THA af­ter both ho­tels were ac­quired by To­ba­go’s leg­isla­tive body.

The ho­tels were pur­chased for a com­bined cost of $32 mil­lion, but have not been in op­er­a­tion since then. Many crit­ics ques­tioned the pur­chase as there ap­peared to be fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies done be­fore the prop­er­ties were bought by the THA.

The Man­ta Lodge how­ev­er had been seen as a niche op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a ho­tel catered for div­ing en­thu­si­asts.

Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged the cu­ri­ous his­to­ry of the prop­er­ty dur­ing his speech at the event, while al­so stat­ing he had sim­i­lar plans to shop Sanc­tu­ary Vil­la amid ris­ing costs to ren­o­vate the prop­er­ty.