An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad has seen an in­crease in lo­cal clients, due to its en­hanced busi­ness mod­el.

This is due to the food and bev­er­age sec­tion lur­ing more T&T na­tion­als.

In a sit-down in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Hy­att’s new food and bev­er­age di­rec­tor, An­tho­ny Sturge, said COVID-19 changed how the ho­tel looks at the day-to-day op­er­a­tion of the ho­tel, es­pe­cial­ly in the food and bev­er­age sec­tion.

Sturge is the first T&T na­tion­al to serve as the ho­tel’s food and bev­er­age di­rec­tor. He as­sumed the po­si­tion in Ju­ly

He said the food and bev­er­age di­vi­sion wears dif­fer­ent hats re­gard­ing the ban­quet­ing, venues, stew­ard­ing and the big push right now is sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Sturge said the ho­tel in­tro­duced a food truck to speak to the lo­cal clien­tele, who want to get some­thing lo­cal quick and easy to eat.

He said an­oth­er ini­tia­tive is to in­clude lo­cal dish­es in the break­fast buf­fet and the lunch menus to at­tract more peo­ple.

He not­ed there is en­ter­tain­ment on Tues­days, Wednes­days, Fri­days, Sat­ur­days and Sun­days. On the Mon­day and Wednes­days which are the qui­et days, the ho­tel is part­ner­ing with dif­fer­ent al­co­hol com­pa­nies to of­fer spe­cials.

Sturge said with these in­tro­duc­tions, there has been a 15 per cent in­crease in lo­cal cap­ture.

“There is an in­crease in lo­cal clien­tele com­ing to cel­e­brate birth­days and an­niver­saries. We have built a per­go­la on the west­ern side of the ho­tel, and we see that used for a lot of dif­fer­ent events. So we are see­ing lo­cal cap­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the small spe­cial oc­ca­sion sec­tor,” Sturge said.

Fur­ther, he said hav­ing af­ford­able pric­ing on the menus—in­clud­ing the din­ner menu which was changed just last month af­ter 16 years—is im­por­tant to cap­ture the lo­cals.

As it per­tains to up­grades, Sturge high­light­ed that ren­o­va­tions are cur­rent­ly go­ing on in the restau­rant sec­tion.

“We are cur­rent­ly do­ing ren­o­va­tions of the floors and al­so of the doors. The ho­tel is cur­rent­ly get­ting some au­to­mat­ic doors as well, which would help the guests with wheel­chair ac­cess. The restau­rant is cur­rent­ly lo­cat­ed in the Port of Spain ball­room while the ren­o­va­tion is hap­pen­ing. The works should be fin­ished by Sep­tem­ber 2,’ Sturge dis­closed.

Re­duc­ing plas­tic us­age

When it comes to the ho­tel re­duc­ing pa­per and plas­tics, the food and bev­er­age di­rec­tor said it is work­ing close­ly with many lo­cal sup­pli­ers to re­duce the us­age, even in the ban­quet space, by at least 80 per cent.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly look­ing at dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives to help with the ef­fi­cien­cy of the op­er­a­tion. So, we are tak­ing a clos­er look at it to make sure that we are of course op­ti­mis­ing what we are cur­rent­ly do­ing, while im­prov­ing the cus­tomer ser­vice for both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al guest,” Sturge men­tioned.

He added with his 17 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence at the Hy­att brand, he aims to keep dri­ving dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives with his team to en­sure that the ho­tel re­mains sus­tain­able.

Join­ing the in­ter­view was new gen­er­al man­ag­er Michael Hoop­er who start­ed the new job in May.

When asked about the changes he in­tends to make at the five-star ho­tel, Hoop­er said, “It’s re­al­ly try­ing to main­tain the con­sis­ten­cy that we’ve al­ready es­tab­lished here.

“Our busi­ness is about mak­ing sure we meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of our guests. So, we’re work­ing on just be­ing ex­treme­ly con­sis­tent about what we do and im­prov­ing along the way. Al­so, our big dri­ve here is the lo­cal food and bev­er­age sec­tion.”

Oc­cu­pan­cy rate

On the is­sue of oc­cu­pan­cy rate Hoop­er—who has a track record of over 30 years of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence in ho­tels and hos­pi­tal­i­ty—said Au­gust has been a strong month with var­i­ous crick­et and sport­ing groups stay­ing at the ho­tel.

“Trinidad, as you know, is not a tourist des­ti­na­tion as such. We have Car­ni­val and we have oth­er things, but the ho­tel will be work­ing with Tourism Trinidad Ltd and oth­er Min­istry of Tourism or­gan­i­sa­tions to try to pro­mote some of the ac­tiv­i­ties which peo­ple are not al­ways aware of in Trinidad.

“Hy­att was set up, I be­lieve, as a busi­ness ho­tel. But busi­ness is al­so sports, cul­ture, re­li­gion, and ed­u­ca­tion. Those kinds of groups that come in­to the ho­tel reg­u­lar­ly are things that we specif­i­cal­ly tar­get with our sales and mar­ket­ing team,” he ex­plained.

Hoop­er high­light­ed that busi­ness meet­ings are a strong and im­por­tant seg­ment and the cor­po­rate-en­gage­ment lev­els are very close to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els and grow­ing.

How­ev­er, the gen­er­al manger did in­di­cate that the oc­cu­pan­cy hasn’t come back to the pre-COVID lev­els. One of the rea­sons he out­lined is be­cause air­lift isn’t back to the pre-COVID lev­els.

“Cer­tain­ly the team is work­ing with the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty or try­ing to make con­nec­tions with them. I know Trinidad tourism or­gan­i­sa­tions are work­ing with the air­lines to in­crease the air­lift. So, what’s come back is the food and bev­er­age, which is slight­ly above the lev­els of pre-pan­dem­ic. But rooms are not quite back there. It’s climb­ing. We ex­pect that cer­tain­ly in the near fu­ture we’ll get there,” Hoop­er de­tailed.

How­ev­er, he did say that rooms for Car­ni­val 2025 are al­ready sold out.

Hoop­er said in the 30 to 60 days af­ter the Car­ni­val sea­son, the ho­tel is al­ready booked.

“Peo­ple are se­ri­ous. We do some­times get some can­cel­la­tions here and there, but they’re very few and far be­tween.”

Asked how long he is go­ing to be gen­er­al man­ag­er at Hy­att, Hoop­er, who was born in New York and has Ba­hami­an her­itage said there is no set time as the pre­vi­ous gen­er­al man­ag­er was at the helm for five years.

“It’s a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, whether you do a good job for Hy­att; you do a good job for the own­er­ship, that’s the first and most im­por­tant thing. You get ac­cept­ed in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and the team mem­bers re­spect it. You can lead the team and they feel com­fort­able with you and you feel com­fort­able there. So there’s no set time,” he em­pha­sised.

Asked about up­grades, Hoop­er said a lot of re­pair and main­te­nance work is tak­ing place, such as floors and doors.

In terms of up­grades for the rooms, he not­ed not at this time time, but it will be done in the near fu­ture.

In terms of, the prof­itabil­i­ty, the gen­er­al man­ag­er iden­ti­fied that Hy­att meets and ex­ceeds in­dus­try stan­dards.

“I mean, Hy­att is a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny as well and we’re owned by a gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty here. But I think they’ve been pret­ty hap­py with our re­turns since the pan­dem­ic.

“We’ve come back very strong, and we con­tin­ue to build. We con­tin­ue to look for ways of im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cies and sav­ing costs,” he said.

Green Key

In May, the ho­tel was award­ed Green Key cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, be­com­ing the first ho­tel in Trinidad to achieve this award.

The Green Key cer­tifi­cate is the lead­ing stan­dard for ex­cel­lence in the field of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­able op­er­a­tion with­in the tourism in­dus­try.

“The cer­tifi­cate rep­re­sents a com­mit­ment by busi­ness­es that their premis­es ad­here to the strict cri­te­ria set by the Foun­da­tion for En­vi­ron­men­tal Ed­u­ca­tion. A Green Key as­sures guests that, by choos­ing to stay with a Green Key es­tab­lish­ment, they are help­ing make a dif­fer­ence for the en­vi­ron­ment,” Hoop­er added.