T&T busi­ness­es are pump­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in­to Guyana and the in­vest­ments are not just in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

At least two brand­ed ho­tels are to be con­struct­ed in the South Amer­i­can coun­try and would add at least 300 qual­i­ty rooms to the co-op­er­a­tive re­pub­lic.

An AC Mar­riott and a Hy­att Place are be­ing de­vel­oped by in­vestors led by John Aboud and busi­ness­man Im­ti­az Ahamad. Both ho­tels are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by 2024.

An­oth­er Trinida­di­an in­vestor, Jer­ry Narace the Busi­ness Guardian con­firmed, has sub­mit­ted a suc­cess­ful bid to a Re­quest for Pro­pos­al for an­oth­er ho­tel. How­ev­er, de­tails con­cern­ing that de­vel­op­ment have not yet emerged.

Last month, the sod was turned for the AC Mar­riott at Ogle in an area for­mer­ly pop­u­lat­ed with sug­ar es­tate lands on the East Coast of De­mer­ara.

Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Ltd signed on to un­der­take the project which will see that area trans­formed in­to a 160 room ho­tel.

“Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels is in the ho­tel de­vel­op­ment busi­ness,” said Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Chair­man John Aboud when con­tact­ed about the de­vel­op­ment.

He ex­plained Guyana’s en­thu­si­asm was en­cour­ag­ing as the com­pa­ny looked to ex­pand its de­vel­op­ment of Mar­riott brand­ed ho­tels. In Feb­ru­ary the group opened The Brix Au­to­graph col­lec­tion, an­oth­er Mar­riott brand­ed ho­tel while plans were al­so made for a Mar­riott ho­tel at Rocky Point in To­ba­go.

Aboud ex­plained Guyana served up an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther ex­pand the group’s part­ner­ship with the Mar­riott.

“Yes this is a con­tin­u­a­tion (of that part­ner­ship) but it’s two dif­fer­ent flags. The Brix is the Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion. And the Mar­riott in Guyana is the AC col­lec­tion. They’re both Mar­riott ho­tels. They’re both Mar­riott flags, but you know, they are lit­tle idio­syn­crasies and vari­a­tions be­tween each Mar­riott brand, but they’re both Mar­riott ho­tels,” he said.

Guyana’s eco­nom­ic rise dri­ven by mas­sive oil and gas dis­cov­er­ies proved at­trac­tive to the group as well.

“Guyana showed up as a great op­por­tu­ni­ty with the de­vel­op­ment that is go­ing on in Guyana. The gov­ern­ment there has been pro­mot­ing ho­tel in­vest­ment. So we went, we had a look at that, we had a good feel for the place based on the an­tic­i­pa­tion of growth in Guyana and the gov­ern­ment has been very proac­tive and sup­port­ive, so we took the de­ci­sion to do a ho­tel there,” Aboud told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Work on the project is on­ly about a month along. It was on­ly last month Aboud spoke at the sod turn­ing for the ho­tel. How­ev­er, he es­ti­mat­ed the South Amer­i­can state should be able to wel­come guests by the last quar­ter of 2024.

“The project has start­ed, de­vel­op­ment has start­ed, there’s a cer­tain amount of in­fra­struc­ture that has to be done be­fore ac­tu­al steel goes up in the air, so that work has start­ed about a month ago and we ex­pect to have the ho­tel ready in 27 months,” he said.

Aboud con­firmed the group had in­vest­ed US$45mil­lion in­to the project. He said build­ing a ho­tel in Guyana will be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than pre­vi­ous work done in T&T but he was op­ti­mistic about the project.

“Guyana will be a lit­tle bit more chal­leng­ing be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly you know we are not there but you know we have en­gaged pro­fes­sion­als on the ground to man­age the day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ty, but oth­er than the fact that it’s fair­ly new and we’re not fa­mil­iar, but we are get­ting fa­mil­iar. There re­al­ly is no dif­fer­ence, it’s the same thing,” he said, “Both gov­ern­ments have been ac­com­mo­dat­ing. So I re­al­ly have no com­plaints about that. The ac­tu­al lo­gis­tics in Guyana, we’ll have to wait and see be­cause it is still ear­ly days, but a lot of ac­tion is go­ing on in Guyana.”

He recog­nised how­ev­er that there were quite a few ho­tel de­vel­op­ments be­ing done in the South Amer­i­can coun­try, and as a re­sult sup­ply is­sues could emerge.

“I’m just hop­ing that there aren’t many bot­tle­necks in this and the process, but be­cause, as you know, Guyana is on a ver­ti­cal tra­jec­to­ry, so to speak. So I sus­pect there will be some bot­tle­necks in the sys­tem with sup­plies etc. But we’ll have to wait and see. I’m not sure if that is go­ing to be the case but if there is we’re go­ing to mit­i­gate against it. It’s all in the plan­ning.”

Imi­ti­az Ahamad, own­er of South­ern Sales, and, with Arthur Lok Jack once the largest share­hold­ers of Guardian Hold­ings, con­firmed that he was part of a group called SIR in­vest­ment Guyana that would be re­spon­si­ble for a brand new 136-room Hy­att Place, set to be lo­cat­ed in Prov­i­dence.

“We ex­pect that the main con­trac­tor should break ground around Oc­to­ber or No­vem­ber,” said Ahamad who ex­plained the de­vel­op­ment was await­ing one out­stand­ing ap­proval.

He said he ex­pect­ed the ho­tel to be com­plet­ed by the first quar­ter of 2024.

Ahamad ex­plained the de­ci­sion to in­vest in a ho­tel in Guyana was born out of a search for new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“We were ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and re­al­ly ex­ploit­ing those op­por­tu­ni­ties. Guyana was on the radar, and more or less around the same time there was an in­vi­ta­tion by the gov­ern­ment for op­por­tu­ni­ties in the ho­tel sec­tor,” he said.

Ahamad ac­knowl­edged the new in­dus­try was a chal­leng­ing one to en­ter, but he ex­plained the in­vest­ment was done af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tions and re­search.

“I looked at it. It’s not an easy busi­ness to be suc­cess­ful in. I agree with that state­ment. There­fore one would have to as an in­vestor, en­gage in fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies. You have to give your­self that op­por­tu­ni­ty to study and re­view the fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies to make sure the op­por­tu­ni­ties that present give you enough en­cour­age­ment to get in­to that tourism busi­ness in that cli­mate and in that coun­try,” he said.

Guyana pushed sig­nif­i­cant­ly for the ex­pan­sion of its tourism sec­tor amid its eco­nom­ic boost cour­tesy its bur­geon­ing en­er­gy sec­tor.

Dur­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the AC Mar­riott, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali stressed that the de­vel­op­ment of Guyana’s tourism sec­tor was part of the gov­ern­ment’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty plan for the fu­ture.

In the past month sod was al­so turned for two oth­er large ho­tels; the 13-storey Pasha Glob­al Ho­tel at Lilien­daal which is set to have 200 rooms and the Four Points by Sher­a­ton Ho­tel which is set to bring 172 rooms to Hous­ton, Guyana.

The Four Points Ho­tel is to be com­plet­ed by the first quar­ter of 2024, while the Pasha Glob­al is ex­pect­ed to have 150 of its rooms avail­able in that year, but will of­fi­cial­ly have all 500 rooms avail­able by 2025.