Raphael John-Lall

While there has been a shift to busi­ness­es util­is­ing we­bi­na­rs and oth­er on­line meth­ods to host and do busi­ness, the man­age­ment of sev­er­al con­fer­ence and event cen­tres in T&T be­lieve that tra­di­tion­al brick-and-mor­tar meet­ing places will con­tin­ue to re­main rel­e­vant.

In Ju­ly 2022, promi­nent US mag­a­zine Rolling Stone pub­lished an ar­ti­cle with the head­line, “We­bi­na­rs: the Fu­ture of On­line Busi­ness” in which it stat­ed that busi­ness­es can reach even wider au­di­ences through on­line plat­forms in­stead of the old fash­ioned phys­i­cal meet­ing places.

Rolling Stone de­fined a “we­bi­nar” as an on­line sem­i­nar or an event that in­di­vid­u­als can at­tend via video or au­dio con­fer­ence call. These events are usu­al­ly record­ed so peo­ple who could not par­tic­i­pate live can watch them at their con­ve­nience.

Mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence and Cat­t­leya Ho­tel, Michelle Bor­de-Har­vey, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, ad­mit­ted that busi­ness “suf­fered” dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She de­scribed the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence as home to the largest in­door/out­door mul­ti-pur­pose event fa­cil­i­ty in T&T, fea­tur­ing mul­ti­ple event spaces, a swim­ming pool com­plex, a state-of-the-art fit­ness cen­tre, the Gar­den Sanc­tu­ary and the Cat­t­leya Ho­tel.

Their cus­tomer base is di­verse from busi­ness­es to wed­dings to en­ter­tain­ment to even church­es who rent their venues.

“The Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence is unique com­pared to the oth­er lo­ca­tions, like ho­tels, be­cause it is strict­ly an events cen­tre whether it is for con­fer­enc­ing, wed­dings or grad­u­a­tions. Yes, we have the Cat­t­leya Ho­tel but the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od suf­fered great­ly be­cause events were not al­lowed to hap­pen. We have ten­ants on the com­pound, we have bar­bers, hair­dressers, an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, we have a gym and so on. A lot of these places were not al­lowed to op­er­ate. None of our event places were al­lowed to op­er­ate,” she said.

She said by late last year the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment al­though not per­fect start­ed to im­prove.

“We have a new bar that opened, we were able to open the sta­di­um back up for games. We had the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) in one of our halls. We al­so had a huge wed­ding. It was not boom­ing, but things picked up.”

De­spite the new busi­ness cul­ture that emerged out of the pan­dem­ic, with we­bi­na­rs and oth­er on­line busi­ness and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, she said the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence has been able to adapt by be­ing com­pet­i­tive in their prices.

“Now, we are al­most back up to full ca­pac­i­ty with every­thing. Over the last few weeks for this Christ­mas sea­son, the en­tire com­pound is booked out, all the hall spaces. It was rough for a while but thank God things are bet­ter. Com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic, we re­alised that peo­ple’s pock­ets were not what it used to be. We want the busi­ness so we are not hard and fast.

“We have two halls which are the Bougainvil­lea and Hi­bis­cus and pre-COVID, TIC used to oc­cu­py both of them for their event. How­ev­er, now a cer­tain busi­ness is oc­cu­py­ing Hi­bis­cus. It would cost rough­ly $40,000 to rent Bougainvil­lea per day. How­ev­er, we try to work with peo­ple’s bud­get. We will not way un­der sell our­selves, as we have a busi­ness to run, but we work with cus­tomers,” said Bor­de-Har­vey.

De­spite the trend in­ter­na­tion­al­ly of more busi­ness­es and oth­er de­mo­graph­ics spend­ing more time on­line and vir­tu­al­ly, Bor­de-Har­vey said the cul­ture of T&T is a phys­i­cal one and peo­ple will al­ways want to use their spaces to meet phys­i­cal­ly.

“T&T na­tion­als by na­ture like to be out and meet and greet in per­son and our venue is tai­lored to our di­verse cus­tomer base. It is all about the ser­vice that we of­fer.”

She added the Cat­t­leya Ho­tel is a bou­tique ho­tel with just over 20 rooms and should not be com­pared to the likes of the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel and that too is now ful­ly oc­cu­pied.

“Right now, it is all booked out. We are al­ready booked for Car­ni­val, so things are work­ing in our favour.”

Own­er of the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel and Suites in St. Ann’s, Ra­jiv Shandilya told the Busi­ness Guardian that the on­line pres­ence is strong but his ho­tel has adapt­ed by de­vel­op­ing pack­ages for the busi­ness class.

“How­ev­er, there is a marked de­cline in de­mand for meet­ing rooms post COVID based on type of meet­ings and tele­con­fer­enc­ing. Hav­ing said that, The Chan­cel­lor has seen a de­mand for small­er meet­ing spaces, which our hy­brid busi­ness suite caters for as com­pared to larg­er con­fer­ence room host­ing 45 per­sons or more.”

He added, “On­line is di­rect, but im­per­son­al. One di­men­sion­al. It’s not or­gan­ic which busi­ness peo­ple are now do­ing, hy­brid meet­ings with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners rather than hav­ing them fly­ing in at­tend­ing per­son­al­ly. This af­fects ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy and short stays. There has been some­what a de­cline as tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides more op­tions with­out a phys­i­cal pres­ence.”

Ben­e­fits of on­line busi­ness

CEO of the T&T Coali­tion Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Vashti Guyadeen told the Busi­ness Guardian about “sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits” of do­ing busi­ness on­line.

They con­duct­ed their “Do­ing Busi­ness With the World” se­ries in 2023 al­most ex­clu­sive­ly via on­line plat­forms.

“One of the pri­ma­ry ad­van­tages is the ex­pand­ed reach and scope of vir­tu­al events. Through ef­fec­tive vir­tu­al host­ing, busi­ness­es can ac­cess a glob­al mar­ket cost-ef­fec­tive­ly. This ap­proach has gained sig­nif­i­cant mo­men­tum due to the pan­dem­ic-dri­ven surge in dig­i­tal trade.

“Cross-bor­der sup­ply, in a nut­shell, refers to when ser­vices are de­liv­ered across bor­ders via telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions or postal net­works. The ser­vice provider and con­sumer are in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, and no phys­i­cal move­ment of ei­ther par­ty is in­volved in the trans­ac­tion.”

She al­so weighed in on the de­bate of whether it is more ex­pen­sive to host a busi­ness con­fer­ence vir­tu­al­ly or in the tra­di­tion­al brick-and-mor­tar spaces.

“The ques­tion of whether we­bi­na­rs save mon­ey is mul­ti­fac­eted. In­deed, vir­tu­al events can be more cost-ef­fec­tive com­pared to tra­di­tion­al, in-per­son events in cer­tain as­pects. How­ev­er, it’s cru­cial to recog­nise that be­ing com­pet­i­tive in the vir­tu­al event space of­ten re­quires sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture.”

She gave the ex­am­ple of the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Ser­vices Ex­porters Sym­po­sium the TTC­SI host­ed this year in col­lab­o­ra­tion with six re­gion­al busi­ness sup­port or­ga­ni­za­tions.

“We chose to host this event on the VFairs plat­form, a so­phis­ti­cat­ed yet ex­pen­sive so­lu­tion. This plat­form al­lowed us to show­case Caribbean firms, en­tre­pre­neurs, and na­tion­als us­ing state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy, which is rapid­ly be­com­ing a stan­dard in the in­dus­try.”

She added that host­ing con­fer­ences vir­tu­al­ly al­so had its own costs.

“So, to di­rect­ly an­swer your ques­tion, while vir­tu­al events can re­duce cer­tain costs like venue hire, trav­el, and ac­com­mo­da­tion, they are not in­her­ent­ly cheap.

“They ne­ces­si­tate in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy and con­tent cre­ation to en­sure a high-qual­i­ty, com­pet­i­tive, and en­gag­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. More­over, the trend to­wards hy­brid events—com­bin­ing vir­tu­al and phys­i­cal el­e­ments—fur­ther un­der­scores the ne­ces­si­ty of in­vest­ing in dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties while main­tain­ing tra­di­tion­al event host­ing skills. The goal is to strike a bal­ance be­tween cost-ef­fec­tive­ness and com­pet­i­tive edge in the glob­al mar­ket­place.”

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh, who al­so spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian on the top­ic, said he and oth­er busi­ness lead­ers had no­ticed a grow­ing trend of vir­tu­al meet­ings since 2020, the year the glob­al pan­dem­ic start­ed.

“Pri­or to 2020, on­line meet­ings were un­heard of. The pan­dem­ic com­pelled every­one, in­clud­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to find in­no­v­a­tive ways of con­duct­ing meet­ings. Dur­ing the two plus years of the pan­dem­ic, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty adapt­ed to vir­tu­al meet­ings, and more re­cent­ly, a fur­ther evo­lu­tion has tak­en place- a hy­brid fo­rum. Per­sons are able to meet via their elec­tron­ic de­vices and in per­son on­ly when nec­es­sary or con­ve­nient,” said Singh.

He al­so said al­though, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) has de­clared that COVID-19 is no longer a glob­al threat, con­glom­er­ates and SMEs have seen it fit to con­tin­ue on­line meet­ings.

“Suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs are al­ways seek­ing al­ter­na­tive ways to man­age ex­pens­es and im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The vir­tu­al plat­form has be­come a nec­es­sary tool for lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings, as it tran­scends ge­o­graph­i­cal bound­aries. It saves valu­able time and cost.

“Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is in­creased as there is ze­ro trav­el time to get to meet­ing des­ti­na­tions and fur­ther­more, cost is re­duced by erad­i­cat­ing venue and cater­ing prepa­ra­tions. We are con­fi­dent that this meet­ing for­mat will con­tin­ue in­to the fore­see­able fu­ture.”