Loyse Vin­cent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Joel Jack says the As­sem­bly has in­ject­ed $8.3 mil­lion in­to a fran­chise ho­tel for the is­land.

Dur­ing the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day, Jack said the ho­tel is a pri­vate project which is par­tial­ly fund­ed through the THA’s Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Eq­ui­ty Fund Lim­it­ed.

Jack kept the de­tails of the project close to his chest ex­cept to say that it is in close prox­im­i­ty to the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex in Scar­bor­ough.

How­ev­er, To­ba­go To­day un­der­stands the ho­tel, which is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­struct­ed at Or­ange Hill, will be run by the man­age­ment of the US-based Com­fort Inn and Suites.

“The project has start­ed and was sched­uled for com­ple­tion in Ju­ly. It will now be com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber. It is just un­der an 80-room fran­chise ho­tel here on the is­land, it’s about 70-80 per cent com­plete, it will be a brand­ed ho­tel on the is­land.”

The Com­fort Inn and Suites fran­chise is run by Choice Ho­tels In­ter­na­tion­al, Inc, which, ac­cord­ing to its web­site, cur­rent­ly fran­chis­es more than 7,000 ho­tels with near­ly 570,000 rooms in more than 40 coun­tries. Choice-brand­ed prop­er­ties pro­vides busi­ness and leisure trav­ellers with a range of high-qual­i­ty, high-val­ue lodg­ing op­tions, it added.

Ac­cord­ing to Jack, the new ho­tel will add to the num­ber of high-end rooms on the is­land. He said the THA is al­so look­ing at oth­er pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship projects and For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment projects to as­sist the pri­vate sec­tor in be­com­ing the en­gine of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in To­ba­go.

“We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing sev­er­al ap­pli­ca­tions in ICT re­new­able en­er­gy and once these ap­pli­ca­tions have been re­viewed and ap­proved by the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Fund Lim­it­ed, then they will be giv­en the nec­es­sary sup­port to start busi­ness­es,” Jack said.

The new Com­fort Inn and Suites is meant to add to To­ba­go’s tourism prod­uct, even as plans are in place to im­prove the qual­i­ty of ac­com­mo­da­tions across the is­land.

Ap­pli­ca­tions are now open for grants be­ing of­fered by the THA’s To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) to sup­port the is­land’s sec­tor fol­low­ing eco­nom­ic fall­out from COVID-19.

The grant, a gov­ern­ment $50 mil­lion up­grade fa­cil­i­ty, is di­vid­ed based on the num­ber of rooms per prop­er­ty.