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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

The Radisson comes to town

by

20140417

Radis­son's new ho­tel in Trinidad, pre­vi­ous­ly the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel, will have a "dra­mat­ic" im­pact on the ho­tel in­dus­try in T&T, said Max­ine Richards, di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing at Radis­son Trinidad Ho­tel.

"A new brand has come in­to the coun­try. That is enough of a change for the com­peti­tors. They will be look­ing to see how they can start to com­pete with this new brand. The im­pact on the mar­ket will be dra­mat­ic. The Radis­son brand has a lot of stan­dards oth­er ho­tels do not of­fer, plus they are part of the Carl­ton Rezi­dor Group, which al­so has the largest trav­el agency in the world. This would al­so at­tract Radis­son cus­tomers from all over the world to Trinidad," she told the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day.

Radis­son Ho­tels is an in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel com­pa­ny with more than 420 lo­ca­tions in 73 coun­tries. The first Radis­son Ho­tel was built in 1909 in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta, Unit­ed States.

As re­port­ed in the me­dia, Radis­son Trinidad's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Daniel Nicholas has said the more than $30 mil­lion "trans­for­ma­tion" bill for the ho­tel shows con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my.

Richards point­ed out there was a Radis­son in To­ba­go many years ago.

"This brand may be new for a lot of peo­ple here in T&T. This is the first time we have one in Trinidad, but there used to be one in To­ba­go many years ago. The av­er­age per­son who may be in their 30s and be­low would not re­al­ly re­mem­ber that brand. It is a large grow­ing brand, there are about 150 Radis­son branch­es world­wide."

She ex­plained this is the third Radis­son Ho­tel in the Caribbean, which be­longs to the Is­sa Nicholas Group.

"These three ho­tels fall un­der the Is­sa Nicholas Group. In April or May last year, we launched the Radis­son Aquat­i­ca Beach Re­sort in Bar­ba­dos. In De­cem­ber 2013, we launched Radis­son Grena­da Beach Re­sort," Richards said.

She said the ho­tel brand the Is­sa Nicholas Group had a fran­chise for be­fore was Crowne Plaza, but it did not of­fer the kind of dy­namism that was need­ed to com­pete in the mar­ket.

Be­fore Crowne Plaza, there was the Hol­i­day Inn Ho­tel, which be­gan op­er­a­tions in 1976.

"The Crowne Plaza was launched in 2000, and in Oc­to­ber 2012, in or­der to have our tran­si­tion to Radis­son, we went in­de­pen­dent un­der Cap­i­tal Plaza. We could not be Crowne Plaza and tran­si­tion; we had to go in­de­pen­dent first. (Is­sa) Nicholas looked for an­oth­er brand but he thought the best choice would have been the Radis­son. He want­ed one brand name to have his Caribbean ho­tels un­der, and here in Trinidad, a brand name to com­pete with the Hy­att Ho­tel and Hilton, a com­pet­i­tive brand and to cater for a cer­tain niche mar­ket."

She said the Radis­son is go­ing af­ter the busi­ness mar­ket.

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