Ke­jan Haynes

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has con­firmed that San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al may once again be con­sid­er­ing To­ba­go for a fu­ture re­sort de­vel­op­ment. The de­ci­sion fol­lowed a meet­ing with San­dals Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man Adam Stew­art and To­ba­go stake­hold­ers, where par­ties agreed to restart dis­cus­sions from a “clean slate.”

The meet­ing con­clud­ed with what Young de­scribed as a “To­ba­go San­dals De­vel­op­ment Res­o­lu­tion,” signed by all present stake­hold­ers. “We the lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of sec­tors and in­ter­est groups in To­ba­go have col­lec­tive­ly agreed that it is in the best in­ter­est of To­ba­go, for us to in­vite the San­dals Group for dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions,” Young said.

On­ly Wat­son Duke and Cur­tis Dou­glas left the meet­ing ear­ly but had al­ready ex­pressed their sup­port.

Young said Stew­art gave a pre­sen­ta­tion out­lin­ing re­cent San­dals projects across the re­gion, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ments in Cu­raçao, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Saint Lu­cia, and Ja­maica. “It was not a pre­sen­ta­tion geared for To­ba­go."

San­dals cur­rent­ly has five new ho­tel projects un­der­way in the Caribbean. “I told him, make To­ba­go the sixth,” Young said.

Stew­art al­so ex­pressed will­ing­ness to in­vest San­dals’ own cap­i­tal in any po­ten­tial To­ba­go project. “He said their usu­al mod­el is to in­vest in the plant—the ho­tel it­self. That’s sig­nif­i­cant,” Young said. “From a cen­tral gov­ern­ment point of view, it would be a great in­vest­ment, but I don’t want to get ahead of my­self.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that no spe­cif­ic site had yet been iden­ti­fied for a new re­sort. “This is us invit­ing them to look at To­ba­go again. It’s ear­ly stages,” he said.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine who spoke as he left the meet­ing, but be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter's me­dia con­fer­ence, echoed the sen­ti­ment that this was a fresh ap­proach. “We all agreed and signed, say­ing we are go­ing to in­vite San­dals to re­turn to the ta­ble so that we could have con­ver­sa­tion,” Au­gus­tine said. “This is not a re­turn to the old arrange­ments. We’re start­ing from scratch.”

Au­gus­tine was clear that the past re­jec­tion of San­dals by To­bag­o­ni­ans stemmed not from op­po­si­tion to the brand, but from dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the terms of the orig­i­nal deal. “To be hon­est, I don’t think To­bag­o­ni­ans ob­ject­ed to San­dals. I think they ob­ject­ed to what the deals were then,” he said.

He al­so not­ed Stew­art’s state­ment that San­dals typ­i­cal­ly builds and owns its re­sorts. “He said they on­ly have one op­er­a­tion where they don’t own the plant. That’s sig­nif­i­cant,” Au­gus­tine said, ref­er­enc­ing past con­cerns over gov­ern­ment fund­ing for con­struc­tion.

The dis­cus­sions are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue af­ter the April 28 To­ba­go elec­tions. “We agree that post-elec­tion, the con­ver­sa­tions will con­tin­ue. Hope­ful­ly, San­dals will agree to re­turn to the ta­ble in To­ba­go,” Au­gus­tine said.

While no for­mal agree­ment has been made, Au­gus­tine con­firmed To­ba­go’s mes­sage to San­dals: “Come back to To­ba­go. Let’s have a con­ver­sa­tion. Let’s look at what is pos­si­ble.”