JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

and KEVON FELMINE

The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing for an ex­pla­na­tion from Gov­ern­ment as to why Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad made a con­tro­ver­sial an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day about go­ing cash­less and no longer ac­cept­ing pay­ments in the TT dol­lars. The state­ment was with­drawn af­ter wide­spread crit­i­cism, but Op­po­si­tion chief whip David Lee said an­swers are still need­ed about the orig­i­nal de­ci­sion.

“We are ask­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, who is re­spon­si­ble for that Hy­att ho­tel, to come clean with this na­tion to tell us why would Hy­att want to charge the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go—if you go there to get a meal, to get a cup of cof­fee, to do any­thing in the Hy­att you have to pay with US dol­lars. Where are we get­ting the US dol­lars to pay if we go to Hy­att, and we work for TT dol­lars?

“Hy­att be­longs to you, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not Hy­att. It just named HY­ATT but it is our as­set. We live in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our cur­ren­cy is Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­ren­cy, not US dol­lars,” the Op­po­si­tion MP said dur­ing the UNC’s week­ly press brief­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In a Face­book post on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad an­nounced that ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 1, all trans­ac­tions will be cash-free for a “faster, smoother and more se­cure ex­pe­ri­ence.” It al­so stat­ed that all ma­jor cred­it cards, deb­it cards and on­ly US dol­lars, British pounds ster­ling and Eu­ros would be ac­cept­ed go­ing for­ward.

Fol­low­ing crit­i­cism, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Michael Hoop­er said, “A mes­sage re­gard­ing cash­less pay­ment op­tions at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel was pre­ma­ture­ly dis­trib­uted with in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion. At this time, we will not be im­ple­ment­ing any changes to our pay­ment process.”

Hote­lier: No rea­son
to not ac­cept TTD

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Tourism and Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion, Al­pha Lorde, says no com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in T&T should con­sid­er a pay­ment pol­i­cy that does not ac­cept TT dol­lars.

Re­fer­ring to Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad’s now-re­tract­ed cash­less pol­i­cy, Lorde point­ed out that the TT dol­lar is the of­fi­cial cur­ren­cy of T&T, and he could not fath­om why a lo­cal es­tab­lish­ment would choose not to ac­cept it.

He said if the ho­tel had gone away with the po­lice, it would have neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed po­ten­tial guests who do not use cred­it cards. He main­tained that busi­ness­es can­not dis­re­gard the val­ue of TT dol­lars or refuse to ac­cept it, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that lo­cal stay­ca­tions rep­re­sent a sub­stan­tial source of rev­enue for the tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor through­out the year.

While Lorde could not speak on be­half of all ho­tels, he ac­knowl­edged the on­go­ing chal­lenges re­lat­ed to for­eign cur­ren­cy. He spec­u­lat­ed that some busi­ness­es might adopt such poli­cies to se­cure more for­eign cur­ren­cy for their op­er­a­tions.

“It is ad­van­ta­geous for any busi­ness to have ac­cess to US dol­lars,” Lorde said.

He added that in­ter­na­tion­al brands, in par­tic­u­lar, may seek to gen­er­ate for­eign cur­ren­cy to meet their oblig­a­tions, such as fees or dues, which are typ­i­cal­ly payable in US dol­lars. Min­imis­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of ob­tain­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy and avoid­ing ex­change rate loss­es are crit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions for these com­pa­nies.

While he re­frained from spec­u­lat­ing on Hy­att’s ini­tial mo­ti­va­tion for the pol­i­cy, Lorde be­lieved that the re­trac­tion demon­strat­ed the ho­tel’s recog­ni­tion of the lo­cal mar­ket’s re­sponse.

 “This like­ly re­flects the vol­ume of busi­ness they re­ceive from the lo­cal mar­ket. If the lo­cal mar­ket was not such a sig­nif­i­cant source of sup­port, they might have cho­sen to pro­ceed with the pol­i­cy.”