An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre is un­der mount­ing pres­sure, with un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing its fu­ture in­ten­si­fy­ing as a long-de­layed $400 mil­lion up­grade pro­gramme re­mains un­ex­e­cut­ed and ne­go­ti­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al hote­lier Hilton con­tin­ue.

A spokesper­son for Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre told Busi­ness Guardian, in re­sponse to ques­tions, that dis­cus­sions with the T&T Gov­ern­ment, the prop­er­ty’s own­ers are on­go­ing and that the ho­tel re­mains op­er­a­tional, fo­cussing on main­tain­ing a pos­i­tive guest ex­pe­ri­ence. That po­si­tion leaves the out­come of those ne­go­ti­a­tions open, but mul­ti­ple in­di­ca­tors sug­gest a re­la­tion­ship un­der strain af­ter years of de­ferred cap­i­tal in­vest­ment.

At the heart of the is­sue is a fun­da­men­tal gap be­tween what is re­quired to sus­tain the prop­er­ty at in­ter­na­tion­al brand stan­dards and what was ul­ti­mate­ly de­liv­ered.

Opened in 1962, the ho­tel has been a cen­tral fix­ture in T&Ts tourism and busi­ness land­scape. Its lo­ca­tion, scale, and his­to­ry have long po­si­tioned it as a flag­ship as­set. That stand­ing is now be­ing test­ed by mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture and pol­i­cy in­er­tia.

The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion did not emerge overnight. It re­flects a pro­longed pe­ri­od of de­layed ex­e­cu­tion on a ma­jor up­grade pro­gramme, es­ti­mat­ed to cost $400 mil­lion, an in­vest­ment wide­ly viewed as nec­es­sary to repo­si­tion the ho­tel in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket.

The agree­ment that shapes the fu­ture

The last Sun­day Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that the op­er­a­tional struc­ture gov­ern­ing the ho­tel is based on a Lease Op­er­a­tor­ship Agree­ment dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2003, be­tween eTeck and Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad. Un­der that arrange­ment, Hilton op­er­ates the prop­er­ty, while own­er­ship and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ma­jor cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture re­main with the State.

The 2003 agree­ment ex­pired in 2023, mark­ing the end of the 20-year lease pe­ri­od.

A Deed of Vari­a­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia dat­ed May 24, 2023, and reg­is­tered on Au­gust 4, 2023, un­der the Reg­is­tra­tion of Deeds Act, shows the agree­ment was not re­newed on a long-term ba­sis but in­stead ex­tend­ed to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, with pro­vi­sion for a fur­ther short-term con­tin­u­a­tion.

The fi­nan­cial mod­el tied State earn­ings to six per cent of gross op­er­at­ing prof­it (GOP), rather than a fixed rental pay­ment. This meant that as per­for­mance weak­ened, State rev­enues de­clined, lim­it­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to rein­vest in the prop­er­ty.

Sources close to the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism told the Busi­ness Guardian that a com­pre­hen­sive Prop­er­ty Im­prove­ment Plan (PIP) was de­vel­oped at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $400 mil­lion, which was ap­proved by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. The plan in­clud­ed full room re­fur­bish­ments, restau­rant and kitchen up­grades, of­fice im­prove­ments, and broad­er in­fra­struc­ture works. The PIP was fi­nalised in late 2024.

Crit­i­cal works such as roof re­pairs and land­slide sta­bil­i­sa­tion were com­plet­ed. How­ev­er, the wider trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme did not pro­ceed.

Those same sources in­di­cat­ed that ne­go­ti­a­tions around the ho­tel man­age­ment agree­ment and the PIP had reached an ad­vanced stage, with on­ly fi­nal el­e­ments re­main­ing.

The process stalled fol­low­ing the change in ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the 2026 Draft Es­ti­mates of De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, $47.11 mil­lion was spent on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Hilton PIP; $163.6 mil­lion was ini­tial­ly al­lo­cat­ed to the project in the 2025 fis­cal year. But that was re­vised to $3.6 mil­lion. The doc­u­ment re­veals that $10 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for the Hilton PIP for the 2026 fis­cal year.
The sit­u­a­tion has been fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by in­sti­tu­tion­al changes. eTeck has been tran­si­tioned to the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs un­der Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, part of a broad­er re­struc­tur­ing aimed at stream­lin­ing land man­age­ment and in­vest­ment process­es. The shift has added an­oth­er lay­er of tran­si­tion at a time when con­ti­nu­ity is crit­i­cal.
The re­sult is a project that was de­fined, cost­ed and par­tial­ly ad­vanced but not ex­e­cut­ed.

Work­ers de­scribe months of un­cer­tain­ty

In­side the ho­tel, em­ploy­ees de­scribe a pro­longed pe­ri­od of in­sta­bil­i­ty dri­ven by re­peat­ed de­lays to the planned ren­o­va­tion.

Work­ers in­di­cat­ed that for more than a year, time­lines were con­sis­tent­ly pushed back, of­ten at the last mo­ment. Dates shift­ed from Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber, then to De­cem­ber, then to March, and be­yond. Each ad­just­ment dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions and cre­at­ed un­cer­tain­ty for staff try­ing to plan their lives.

That pat­tern led many em­ploy­ees to con­clude ear­ly that some­thing was wrong, even if the full ex­tent was not clear at the time.

The im­pact has been par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere for part-time work­ers, many of whom have be­tween 15 and 30 years of ser­vice. These em­ploy­ees, who typ­i­cal­ly work along­side per­ma­nent staff, have seen their hours re­duced sig­nif­i­cant­ly, some­times to as lit­tle as one day per week.

Work­ers ex­plained that this has made it dif­fi­cult to meet fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments or plan ahead, as in­come has be­come un­pre­dictable. At the same time, per­ma­nent staff have been asked to take va­ca­tion leave, in some in­stances, to al­low part-time em­ploy­ees ac­cess to lim­it­ed shifts.

Em­ploy­ees de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as un­com­fort­able and un­sus­tain­able, not­ing that there has been lit­tle clar­i­ty from man­age­ment on how the sit­u­a­tion will be re­solved.

They al­so point­ed to the ef­fect on busi­ness op­er­a­tions. Dur­ing key pe­ri­ods such as Car­ni­val, in­con­sis­tent mes­sag­ing around ren­o­va­tion time­lines af­fect­ed book­ings. Po­ten­tial guests were turned away or chose al­ter­na­tive ho­tels due to un­cer­tain­ty about avail­abil­i­ty, re­sult­ing in lost rev­enue.

Work­ers in­di­cat­ed that the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the prop­er­ty’s fu­ture on­ly in­ten­si­fied af­ter the Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive. They re­port­ed that no for­mal in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion was is­sued im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter those re­ports, leav­ing em­ploy­ees with­out clear guid­ance.

Re­quests for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, in­clud­ing ef­forts to se­cure ur­gent meet­ings, did not re­ceive time­ly re­spons­es. Em­ploy­ees de­scribed a lack of ac­knowl­edge­ment from man­age­ment even as con­cern grew among staff.

A town hall meet­ing has been sched­uled for Thurs­day (to­day) at 2:30pm, with work­ers ex­pect­ing that man­age­ment will ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vide clar­i­ty. How­ev­er, pri­or en­gage­ment ses­sions were de­scribed as large­ly un­in­for­ma­tive, with em­ploy­ees ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion over what they viewed as a lack of di­rect an­swers.
Some work­ers not­ed that they had not at­tend­ed re­cent town hall meet­ings be­cause they felt those ses­sions did not ad­dress sub­stan­tive con­cerns. At the same time, there has been en­cour­age­ment for em­ploy­ees to at­tend up­com­ing meet­ings and raise ques­tions di­rect­ly.

Work­ers al­so de­scribed an en­vi­ron­ment where at­ten­tion has shift­ed to­ward iden­ti­fy­ing who may have en­gaged with ex­ter­nal par­ties, rather than ad­dress­ing the un­der­ly­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the ho­tel.

They in­di­cat­ed that the in­for­ma­tion re­port­ed pub­licly was not pre­vi­ous­ly shared in­ter­nal­ly, and that em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing those in rep­re­sen­ta­tive roles, learned de­vel­op­ments at the same time as the wider pub­lic.

The over­all sen­ti­ment among staff is one of un­cer­tain­ty, with em­ploy­ees de­scrib­ing “ques­tion marks over every­body” at the prop­er­ty.

The Hilton Trinidad­work­force is es­ti­mat­ed at over 300 em­ploy­ees, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 to 250 with­in the bar­gain­ing unit. Work­ers in­di­cat­ed that part-time em­ploy­ees, rather than those with­in the bar­gain­ing unit, are like­ly to feel the im­me­di­ate im­pact of any op­er­a­tional changes.

A re­gion­al com­par­i­son un­der­scores the gap

The sit­u­a­tion at Hilton Trinidad con­trasts with de­vel­op­ments at oth­er Hilton-brand­ed prop­er­ties in the re­gion.

Re­cent up­grades at Hilton Bar­ba­dos, where Busi­ness Guardian stayed two weeks ago, in­clud­ed im­prove­ments to meet­ing spaces and guest fa­cil­i­ties, re­flect­ing on­go­ing in­vest­ments aligned with brand stan­dards. That com­par­i­son high­lights the scale of the gap fac­ing the Trinidad prop­er­ty.

Hilton’s glob­al frame­work re­quires prop­er­ties to main­tain spe­cif­ic stan­dards. Where those stan­dards are not met, con­tin­ued align­ment be­comes in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult.

In Trinidad, the ab­sence of sus­tained cap­i­tal in­vest­ment at the re­quired lev­el has brought that is­sue in­to fo­cus.

To­ba­go Hilton closed its doors in 2008 and  the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach Re­sort opened on June 1, 2012.

Pri­vate in­ter­est emerges amid un­cer­tain­ty

The un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the prop­er­ty has al­so drawn at­ten­tion from the pri­vate sec­tor.

Busi­ness­man and ho­tel de­vel­op­er John Aboud in­di­cat­ed that he would con­sid­er in­volve­ment if an op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es, re­flect­ing the con­tin­ued val­ue of the prop­er­ty de­spite its cur­rent chal­lenges.

Aboud, who is the de­vel­op­er of the  Hilton Gar­den Inn with con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties and 115 rooms, said the sod turn­ing is ex­pect­ed to take place in April at South Park San Fer­nan­do and con­struc­tion to be­gin right aft­ter.

The min­istry of­fi­cial said dis­cus­sions around a po­ten­tial pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) have al­so sur­faced, giv­en the scale of in­vest­ment re­quired to repo­si­tion the ho­tel.

Such a mod­el would in­volve pri­vate cap­i­tal along­side State par­tic­i­pa­tion.