Fol­low­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, which re­sult­ed in a tran­si­tion from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led gov­ern­ment, the sta­tus of sev­er­al high-pro­file ho­tel projects has come un­der scruti­ny.

Un­der the PNM’s “Vi­sion 2030” strat­e­gy, these de­vel­op­ments were po­si­tioned as the back­bone of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, the new ad­min­is­tra­tion has launched a “Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print” that pri­ori­tis­es au­dit­ing state-fund­ed in­cen­tives and en­forc­ing stricter en­vi­ron­men­tal over­sight.

The then es­ti­mat­ed cap­i­tal in­vest­ment for the projects iden­ti­fied by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion was:

Hilton Gar­den Inn: $125 mil­lion

Mar­riott, To­ba­go: $500+ mil­lion

Mara­cas Bay Ho­tel: $50 mil­lion

NA­PA ho­tel: re­fur­bish­ment/up­grade $12 mil­lion

Four Points by Sher­a­ton Ho­tel

Since the change in ad­min­is­tra­tion what has be­come of them?

When the Busi­ness Guardian sought clar­i­ty on the sta­tus of these spe­cif­ic de­vel­op­ments from Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj, the Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, the re­sponse was a gen­er­al state­ment of pol­i­cy.

Rather than pro­vid­ing project-spe­cif­ic up­dates or con­firm­ing whether these de­vel­op­ments re­main on sched­ule, the min­istry is­sued a gen­er­alised state­ment em­pha­sis­ing broad­er eco­nom­ic gains: “The Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism has pro­vid­ed clear ev­i­dence via re­cent pub­li­ca­tions that tourism is trend­ing up­ward. The Gov­ern­ment, through the min­istry con­tin­ues to pur­sue all vi­able in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties that align with non-en­er­gy sec­tor na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties in­clud­ing ex­pand­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ho­tel and tourism ca­pac­i­ty.”

De­spite this of­fi­cial vague­ness, the ground-lev­el re­al­i­ty for these projects varies.

For in­stance, the Hilton Gar­den Inn at South Park in San Fer­nan­do ap­pears to be mov­ing for­ward, with a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny sched­uled for April 2026 and con­struc­tion ex­pect­ed to fol­low im­me­di­ate­ly, said de­vel­op­er and chair­man of Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels John Aboud.

In con­trast, the flag­ship $500 mil­lion Mar­riott Ho­tel at Rocky Point in To­ba­go re­mains caught in the pre-con­struc­tion phase.

Aboud, who is al­so the de­vel­op­er for that ho­tel and vil­la project, con­firmed that the project is “still very much on,” but not­ed that they are cur­rent­ly await­ing a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) and fi­nal ap­provals.

He ex­pressed hope that con­struc­tion would fi­nal­ly be­gin in the sec­ond half of 2026.

Mean­while, in No­vem­ber 2022, the sod was turned for the Four Points by Sher­a­ton Ho­tel in the Pi­ar­co Aero Park.

It was ear­marked as a 152-room ho­tel with a $156 mil­lion in­vest­ment.

To date, no work has start­ed.

That ho­tel was ex­pect­ed to be de­signed and built by Pres­tige Ho­tels Ltd (PHL), which is a joint ven­ture be­tween UR­BAHN Ar­chi­tects and STAGES Group Inc.

Con­verse­ly, progress con­tin­ues on the near­by Hilton Hamp­ton Inn near Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

De­vel­op­er Arvin Kalloo con­firmed that the project is ac­tive, with com­ple­tion now tar­get­ed for the sec­ond quar­ter of 2027.

While the Mar­riott awaits its en­vi­ron­men­tal green light, the Mara­cas Bay Ho­tel has al­ready be­gun its slow climb out of a lengthy ad­min­is­tra­tive process. Orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed as a 40-room re­fur­bish­ment in 2022, the project faced years of “metic­u­lous plan­ning” and bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays.

De­vel­op­er, Qualitech Ma­chin­ing Ser­vices man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Deep­ak Lall, ex­plained that al­though the prop­er­ty was ac­quired in late 2021, phys­i­cal con­struc­tion on­ly com­menced in June 2025 and is now on track for an open­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2027.

“The con­struc­tion start­ed last year, June. Be­cause we got a lit­tle de­lay with the pa­per­work and the per­mit we had to start in the rainy sea­son which is not ide­al but we did not want to put it off a fur­ther six months again,” Lall stat­ed.

In fis­cal year 2024, a pub­lic re­quest for pro­pos­als was is­sued to se­cure an op­er­a­tor for the 52-room NA­PA Ho­tel.

In April 2025, Kent In­vest­ments Ltd was iden­ti­fied to mar­ket, man­age and op­er­ate the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Ho­tel, which com­pris­es of 53 rooms, in­clud­ing lux­u­ry suites.

In De­cem­ber 2023, Cab­i­net ap­proved the is­suance of a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) for the op­er­a­tion of the NA­PA Ho­tel.

The RFP, is­sued in March 2024 and closed in June 2024, in­vit­ed pro­pos­als from qual­i­fied en­ti­ties with a demon­strat­ed track record in ho­tel man­age­ment.

Six prospec­tive pro­po­nents ex­pressed in­ter­est and at­tend­ed the manda­to­ry site vis­it.

Kent In­vest­ments Ltd had emerged as the top-ranked bid­der.

The Busi­ness Guardian un­der­stands that fol­low­ing the change in ad­min­is­tra­tion, no work has start­ed at NA­PA.

In a sting­ing cri­tique of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s eco­nom­ic han­dling, for­mer tourism min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell sound­ed the alarm on what he de­scribes as a “state of sta­sis” with­in T&T’s ho­tel sec­tor.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Mitchell as­sert­ed that cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in tourism in­fra­struc­ture has slowed al­most to a com­plete halt, leav­ing the na­tion’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty prod­uct at risk of per­ma­nent de­cline.

He point­ed the fin­ger square­ly at the UNC gov­ern­ment, ar­gu­ing that in­vestor con­fi­dence has been se­vere­ly erod­ed by a pol­i­cy ap­proach he char­ac­terised as whim­si­cal, in­con­sis­tent and fun­da­men­tal­ly un­pre­dictable.

The gap be­tween the promis­es made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign and the re­al­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent im­ple­men­ta­tion has cre­at­ed a tox­ic en­vi­ron­ment for de­vel­op­ment, Mitchell said.

He not­ed that in­vestors, wary of shift­ing goal­posts, have large­ly adopt­ed a “wait and see” ap­proach, choos­ing to with­hold ma­jor cap­i­tal com­mit­ments un­til a more sta­ble eco­nom­ic cli­mate emerges.

“For ex­am­ple, con­trary to Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar’s promise pri­or to the elec­tion, in­vestors now face ris­ing costs for ce­ment, con­struc­tion and build­ing ma­te­ri­als, per­son­nel, en­er­gy and oth­er in­puts from the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor that have made ho­tel de­vel­op­ment and re­fur­bish­ment more ex­pen­sive, fur­ther dis­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ment,” Mitchell stat­ed.

These in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­struc­tion sec­tors have made both new ho­tel de­vel­op­ments and the re­fur­bish­ment of ex­ist­ing prop­er­ties pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive, Mitchel said.

Mitchell al­so cit­ed the Hilton prop­er­ty project as a pri­ma­ry ex­am­ple of the gov­ern­ment’s lethar­gy, not­ing that slow and non-com­mit­tal de­ci­sion-mak­ing has fur­ther cloud­ed the minds of po­ten­tial in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

The con­se­quences of this in­vest­ment drought are far-reach­ing.

Mitchell warned that with­out a steady flow of cap­i­tal, the coun­try’s room stock would re­main stag­nant in both quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty.

As ac­com­mo­da­tion prop­er­ties age with­out nec­es­sary up­grades, T&T would be­come in­creas­ing­ly less com­pet­i­tive com­pared to its re­gion­al neigh­bours, Mitchell said, adding that this lack of mod­erni­sa­tion di­rect­ly ham­pers the des­ti­na­tion’s abil­i­ty to at­tract the high-vol­ume tourism re­quired for the sec­tor to thrive.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Mitchell framed the is­sue as a threat to the broad­er na­tion­al econ­o­my.

He ar­gued that a lack of in­ter­est in the des­ti­na­tion trans­lates to few­er vis­i­tors and, by ex­ten­sion, re­duced for­eign ex­change earn­ings and lost jobs.

Fur­ther, the for­mer min­is­ter said the pres­ence of in­ter­na­tion­al brands such as Mar­riott and Hilton would en­hance glob­al vis­i­bil­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty, and book­ings through their mar­ket­ing net­works and loy­al­ty pro­grammes, adding that more rooms and recog­nised brands would al­so sup­port ex­pand­ed air­lift, as air­lines re­spond to stronger, more re­li­able de­mand.

Im­por­tant­ly, Mitchell said these ho­tels en­able di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in­to busi­ness tourism, con­fer­ences, sports, and leisure, while rais­ing ser­vice stan­dards through in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices.

The re­sult is a stronger tourism prod­uct, in­creased vis­i­tor ar­rivals, greater for­eign ex­change earn­ings and wider eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits across mul­ti­ple sec­tors, he added.

Lisa Shandilya, gen­er­al man­ag­er of The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel in St Ann’s and pres­i­dent of the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (TIATT) not­ed that the coun­try stands at a tip­ping point, and TIATT is ready to tip the scales to­ward growth.

Shift­ing away from stag­na­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion is high­light­ing the un­de­ni­able val­ue tourism brings to the GDP through its strate­gic roadmap.

“We are mov­ing from con­ver­sa­tion to con­tri­bu­tion,” the board sug­gests, ad­vo­cat­ing for a col­lab­o­ra­tion-first PPP mod­el. This strat­e­gy isn’t just about at­tract­ing more vis­i­tors; it’s about a to­tal evo­lu­tion of the in­dus­try. Through strate­gic al­liances, TIATT plans to re­shape the na­tion­al nar­ra­tive, am­pli­fy our glob­al pres­ence, and em­pow­er the lo­cal work­force to be­come the back­bone of a re­vi­talised econ­o­my,” she added.