SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Lo­cal com­pa­ny, Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Lim­it­ed, has signed on to con­struct a $500 mil­lion 200-room Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel in Rocky Point, To­ba­go.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort To­ba­go by Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon.

When com­plet­ed, the project is ex­pect­ed to com­prise a 200 room ho­tel, 28 du­plex res­i­dences, 11 sin­gle-fam­i­ly lux­u­ry vil­las, 12 town hous­es and a full-scale of lux­u­ry ameni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to eTeck’s web­site, the lands known as Rocky Point con­sist of two parcels of land- one be­ing 13 acres and the oth­er be­ing 15 acres.

A pub­lic beach bor­ders the south­ern part of the land.

Gopee-Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment made a de­ci­sion in Jan­u­ary 2021 to in­vite of­fers for the de­vel­op­ment of a ho­tel in Rocky Point, through the Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (eTecK).

The min­is­ter said the same site was se­lect­ed sev­er­al years ago for the con­struc­tion of a Hilton To­ba­go, but that project nev­er got off the ground.

“But here we are once again as part­ners, eTeck, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and the de­vel­op­ers, we will have a suc­cess­ful Rocky Point Mar­riott ho­tel,” she said.

She said sev­en ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est were sub­mit­ted for the project and an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, with mem­bers from eTeck, the Fi­nance Min­istry, the Trade and In­dus­try Min­istry, the Tourism Min­istry and the THA- se­lect­ed two can­di­dates.

When re­quests for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) were closed in Au­gust, the com­mit­tee se­lect­ed Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels for the project.

“The Cab­i­net ac­cept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of the com­mit­tee on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2021, and has au­tho­rised eTeck to is­sue a let­ter of of­fer to Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Lim­it­ed for a 99-year lease for the lands at Rocky Point for the de­vel­op­ment of this first-class ho­tel. Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels of Trinidad and To­ba­go has com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing TT$496 mil­lion through a com­bi­na­tion of eq­ui­ty and debt, in oth­er words, no Gov­ern­ment fund­ing will be pro­vid­ed for this cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in this new first-class re­sort,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She said the project will bring both short and long-term ben­e­fits to the is­land, with the cre­ation of 750 jobs dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase and 220 jobs once the ho­tel opens.

Su­pe­ri­or has al­so com­mit­ted to us­ing lo­cal pro­duce, labour and ma­te­ri­als as far as pos­si­ble, Gopee-Scoon said.

“The com­pa­ny has com­mit­ted to con­duct­ing train­ing pro­grammes in con­junc­tion with the THA at the Sec­ondary School lev­el in To­ba­go to pre­pare po­ten­tial can­di­dates for ca­reers in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism sec­tor,” she added.

Gopee-Scoon said the re­sort will al­so cre­ate a farm­ers pro­gramme where the ho­tel will work with farm­ers in To­ba­go to im­prove pro­duc­tion and ser­vice.

She said the project will pro­vide a “cat­alyt­ic stim­u­lus” for To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor and a plat­form for sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment.

Gopee-Scoon said the Mar­riott would al­so place To­ba­go as a fron­trun­ner in the Caribbean tourism in­dus­try.

“By 2025 we are go­ing to have this mag­nif­i­cent de­vel­op­ment at Rocky Point in To­ba­go,” she said.

eTeck chair­man, Im­ti­az Ahamad said Su­pe­ri­or has a vast amount of ex­pe­ri­ence in the ho­tel in­dus­try both lo­cal­ly and abroad. He said eTeck was sat­is­fied the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee had se­lect­ed the best com­pa­ny for the project.

“A high­light of the pro­pos­al was the in­clu­sion of a de­tailed en­vi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion plan, which takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion all stages of the project from de­sign to con­struc­tion to oc­cu­pan­cy, the pre­lim­i­nary de­signs have al­so con­sid­ered the con­sid­er­a­tion for the en­vi­ron­ment and the nat­ur­al beau­ty of the bay,” Ahamad said.

He said the plans al­so ad­dress the im­pact on veg­e­ta­tion, ma­rine life and tur­tles on the is­land.

THA chief sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis al­so spoke, say­ing it was a good day for To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, re­call­ing the failed To­ba­go San­dals project, Den­nis al­so urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to be cau­tious.

“It must al­so trig­ger some cau­tion be­cause it was on­ly five years ago that we al­most had a San­dals but I want to give the peo­ple of To­ba­go the as­sur­ance that this time around it will not be about al­most, we will have a Mar­riott ho­tel here in To­ba­go by 2025,” Den­nis said.

The San­dals To­ba­go project was an­nounced in 2017 but two years lat­er, the re­sort an­nounced it would not fol­low through with its con­struc­tion plans due to neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty. There were nu­mer­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns raised about the San­dals project at that time.

Yes­ter­day, Den­nis said mil­lions of dol­lars were be­ing in­vest­ed in To­ba­go’s tourism in­dus­try, both by the State and pri­vate de­vel­op­ers. He urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to sup­port the Mar­riott project, say­ing, “All of us were around and we saw what tran­spired with the San­dals project. I’m sim­ply say­ing to the peo­ple of To­ba­go that we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that this be­comes a suc­cess. At­tempts to ma­lign and de­rail this project should not be en­cour­aged in the To­ba­go space.”

Den­nis said he was send­ing out his mes­sage not on­ly to politi­cians but to all stake­hold­ers with­in the tourism sec­tor.