Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s newest lux­u­ry ho­tel, The BRIX, Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion was for­mal­ly opened on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Lo­cat­ed near Queen’s Hall, at Coblentz Av­enue, in Port-of-Spain, the ho­tel, for­mal­ly known as The Carl­ton Sa­van­nah, was ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed to open in 2019, but was de­layed as a re­sult of the glob­al pan­dem­ic.

As part of the Mar­riott In­ter­na­tion­al brand, The BRIX is owned by a group of lo­cal in­vestors, known as the Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Group.

The in­vest­ment group is head­ed by Chair­man John Aboud, An­tho­ny Ra­hael, Arvin Kalloo and Ruthven Smith.

Ac­cord­ing to Aboud, at the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day, the fi­nal cost of the project was TT$400 mil­lion.

“De­spite the tremen­dous chal­lenges, least of all the pan­dem­ic, we are proud to be here to­day, com­plet­ing the jour­ney and to present to you, the finest ho­tel in the Caribbean,” he said.

“The pan­dem­ic, in ad­di­tion to caus­ing se­ri­ous prob­lems with the hu­man re­source of our coun­try, caused sev­er­al glob­al short­ages, lo­gis­tic night­mares, all re­sult­ing in tremen­dous de­lays and cost over­runs.

In fact, many items we ex­pe­ri­enced cost over­runs of ex­cess of 100 per cent.”

The BRIX, ac­cord­ing to Aboud, will have 163 rooms and will of­fer vis­i­tors a lux­u­ri­ous taste of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ho­tel will fea­ture lo­cal art, as well as lo­cal and Caribbean-in­flu­enced cui­sine made from lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts. He said it will em­ploy 150 peo­ple—99 per cent of whom will be lo­cals.

“We want­ed to en­sure the ho­tel main­tained its lo­cal iden­ti­ty and his­to­ry as af­firmed by our name, The BRIX—which is the chem­i­cal mea­sure­ment of sug­ar in so­lu­tion. A crop with deep his­tor­i­cal, fi­nan­cial and cul­tur­al mean­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Aboud said.

“We have clear­ly demon­strat­ed our re­solve to work along­side the gov­ern­ment to achieve this ob­jec­tive. As we say in lo­cal par­lance, Prime Min­is­ter, we have put our mon­ey where our mouth is.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the event’s fea­ture speak­er, laud­ed the Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tel Group for their in­vest­ment at a chal­leng­ing and un­cer­tain time.

“I want to con­grat­u­late this busi­ness group of na­tion­al in­vestors who have de­cid­ed to make this foot­print, this im­print, this im­plant in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in this cap­i­tal city. If we don’t have con­fi­dence, op­por­tu­ni­ties will pass,” Dr Row­ley said.

“No­body will go off and make that kind of in­vest­ment if you don’t have con­fi­dence that there’s a to­mor­row and that to­mor­row will be bet­ter than to­day giv­en the chal­lenges and it is that spir­it that is re­quired in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day.”

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell was al­so op­ti­mistic about the ho­tel’s im­pact.

He be­lieved that it would, di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, ben­e­fit a num­ber of lo­cal in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing the trans­port, en­ter­tain­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture sec­tors.

“Through the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act, this ho­tel qual­i­fied for and re­ceived a num­ber of con­ces­sions, and at last count, $12 mil­lion in rev­enue from the cus­toms and ex­cise rev­enues were fore­gone by the gov­ern­ment,” Mitchell said.

“That $12 mil­lion is to stim­u­late linked in­dus­tries.”