The Radis­son Blu Ho­tel which is strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed in the heart of down­town Port-of-Spain will not on­ly add to Trinidad’s qual­i­ty ho­tel room­stock but will en­hance the cap­i­tal with its al­lur­ing struc­ture.

Ashram Ram­nar­ine, group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at Radis­son Trinidad said the cost of the ho­tel will be be­tween $175 to $200 mil­lion when it is fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed as Radis­son Blu is set to open its doors with­in the next 12 months.He made the com­ments on Thurs­day, dur­ing a tour by the me­dia of the ap­proved mod­el suites.

Ram­nar­ine who shared in­sights about the ho­tel’s progress thus far said, “We are pleased to an­nounce the ap­proval of our mod­el suites by the Radis­son Blu fran­chise.

These are very ex­quis­ite ho­tel rooms that will give Trinidad and To­ba­go much-need­ed ex­po­sure and of­fer the guests a very val­ued ex­pe­ri­ence.

“The Radis­son Blu is a 72-one-and-two-bed­room suite ho­tel, which in­cludes full laun­dry and kitchen fa­cil­i­ties and caters to a very dif­fer­ent type of guests in re­la­tion to cor­po­rate busi­ness, gov­ern­ment busi­ness, pri­vate fam­i­ly des­ti­na­tions of those who want a cor­po­rate cen­tre to work in a home away from home en­vi­ron­ment.

“The theme is hav­ing a home away from home where the peo­ple of our coun­try can come and in­deed those in the Caribbean and oth­er parts can come and ex­pe­ri­ence the warmth, re­cep­tiv­i­ty, and hos­pi­tal­i­ty of our cul­ture and our coun­try with a very high-end prod­uct,” Ram­nar­ine ex­plained.

He added that the first floor is go­ing to have a state-of-the-art spa fa­cil­i­ty with a state-of-the-art fit­ness cen­tre. Ram­nar­ine was al­so proud that lo­cal con­tent was used in the con­struc­tion process, stat­ing that from the com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion to present, 100 per cent lo­cal con­trac­tors were em­ployed, with a to­tal labour force em­ployed of be­tween 800 and 1,000 peo­ple over the pe­ri­od.

“When com­plet­ed we ex­pect to pro­vide full-time em­ploy­ment to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 staff,” he added.

The su­per­struc­ture of the ho­tel was com­plet­ed in 2018 how­ev­er, con­struc­tion be­gan a few years be­fore Ram­nar­ine stat­ed.Up­on com­ple­tion of the su­per­struc­ture there were some de­lays for about a year.

In de­tail the rea­sons Ram­nar­ine said, “We spent a year in get­ting the right type of per­sons for qual­i­ty de­sign be­cause the Radis­son stan­dard has a cer­tain qual­i­ty de­sign and these are very spe­cif­ic for ex­am­ple, fur­ni­ture might be man­u­fac­tured in one coun­try and go to Viet­nam to be up­hol­stered with the req­ui­site stan­dards and so on.”

Then there were fur­ther de­lays for two and half years with the on­set of COVID-19 in March 2020 which forced the glob­al ship­ping in­dus­try to grind to a halt.Now, every­thing is on stream and work con­tin­ues apace.Frances Gon­za­les, head of op­er­a­tions, South Amer­i­can and the Caribbean for Choice Ho­tels, who al­so spoke at the me­dia tour func­tion, said the en­ti­ty has a lot of plans for the brand.

On Au­gust 11, 2022, Choice ac­quired Radis­son Ho­tels Amer­i­c­as, adding nine brands and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 67,000 rooms in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the Caribbean to its port­fo­lio.

With 22 brands, Choice Ho­tels has more than 7,500 ho­tels, and near­ly 650,000 rooms, in 46 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries.Speak­ing on the ac­qui­si­tion, Gon­za­les said, “This is very ex­cit­ing for us be­cause this is bring­ing a new per­spec­tive in­to the com­pa­ny...With this al­liance and the pur­chase of Radis­son Ho­tel Group Amer­i­c­as, it brings them a new lev­el of prod­uct like the one that we are see­ing (Radis­son Blu) to their port­fo­lio,” she said.

In­creas­ing room­stock

Radis­son Blu was born from the vi­sion of its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Is­sa Nicholas, who has over 50 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the ho­tel in­dus­try across the Caribbean.It has a to­tal of 13 floors in­clu­sive of the ground floor.

There are 72 suites lo­cat­ed on 11 floors with sev­en suites on each floor com­pris­ing of three sin­gle-bed­room and four two-bed­room suites. The one-bed­room suites are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 720 square feet while the two-bed­room suites vary from 1,000 to 1,300 square feet.Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pent­house suites are lo­cat­ed on the top floor which al­so has an in­fin­i­ty pool and pa­tio.

These suites are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,500 square feet and all suites are out­fit­ted with kitchen and laun­dry fa­cil­i­ties.

T&T’s Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, said with the Radis­son Blu com­ing on­board this will fur­ther en­hance Trinidad’s room­stock, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­ods when rooms are in high de­mand in the city.

In Oc­to­ber 2020, in his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2021 bud­get de­bate, Mitchell said the ho­tel would open in March 2021.

In No­vem­ber 2021, Mitchell said the Radis­son Blu was ex­pect­ed to open in Au­gust 2022.Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell Trinidad’s cur­rent room­stock stands at 2,200.

“I can’t tell you the num­ber of Airbnb rooms right now (in Trinidad). In To­ba­go, an au­dit was done and if I re­call be­tween the ho­tel rooms, guest rooms, etc. it was clos­er to about 3,500.

“I mean it’s nowhere near what you know we would like to have but of course, we are work­ing,” the min­is­ter ex­plained, adding that his min­istry would “love to wel­come more ho­tel rooms in the cap­i­tal.”

In this vein, he said the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with de­vel­op­ers to get this done as the tourism agen­da con­tin­ues to be pushed to en­hance the sec­tor.

“The NA­PA ho­tel will soon go out for a RFP (Re­quest for Pro­pos­als). It’s a 52-room ho­tel but it is very high qual­i­ty and we would love to see that get in­to ho­tel room­stock.

“We are push­ing our Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act and the in­cen­tives that arise out of our pro­gramme, The Tourism Ac­com­mo­da­tion Up­grade Pro­gramme, to get ho­tels, even some of those ho­tels that are derelict to get in­vestors to pur­chase the ho­tels and turn it around.

“We’ve seen that with the ASA Wright ecolodge and now we will see it with the Mt Plaisir ho­tel in Grande Riv­iere and that ho­tel is al­ways well sub­scribed, as it caters to the tur­tle-watch­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” Mitchell ex­plained.

On what vis­i­tor num­bers cur­rent­ly look like for Car­ni­val 2024 Mitchell said thus far, this re­mains very en­cour­ag­ing.

“I’ve spo­ken to a num­ber of stake­hold­ers who have ex­pressed great op­ti­mism for the 2024 Car­ni­val. I had some pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion in Au­gust, and I be­lieve then, about 40 per cent of the flights and the ho­tels had been sold out. I mean, dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, we al­ways have a chal­lenge for trans­porta­tion, and al­so for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“Thank­ful­ly, CO­PA has added more flights and KLM will add an ad­di­tion­al flight dur­ing the pe­ri­od of Car­ni­val. So, we have some good news and we ex­pect to get some more good news as Amer­i­can Air­lines, Caribbean Air­lines will add some more flights. We al­ways have a chal­lenge for room stock dur­ing the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od which is way over­sub­scribed.

“With the ho­tel stock as well as the Airbnbs, I think it’s a time when those providers are ful­ly oc­cu­pied, and they earn some good for­eign ex­change. We would love to have some more ho­tel rooms com­ing in­to the in­ven­to­ry in Port-of-Spain,” Mitchell re­it­er­at­ed.