As dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue on the es­tab­lish­ment of a $500 mil­lion Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel and prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment at Rocky Point in To­ba­go, a sec­ond con­sul­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed to take place ei­ther next month or Au­gust.

There is still a way to go for the prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment to re­ceive the green light, as the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) is ex­pect­ed to be de­ter­mined by Au­gust 2025.

How­ev­er, on­go­ing talks are im­por­tant as they al­so pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant feed­back from stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing res­i­dents.

In the mean­time, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon told the Busi­ness Guardian she re­mains hope­ful the project will not on­ly come on stream, but will ren­der a host of ben­e­fits.

“I am con­vinced this project will ben­e­fit all of the peo­ple of To­ba­go pri­mar­i­ly ... with tremen­dous spin­off across all eco­nom­ic sub sec­tors.

“The Rocky Point ho­tel, giv­en the Mar­riott brand, will be huge­ly im­pact­ful on the To­ba­go tourism land­scape, bring­ing at­ten­tion to the is­land and its many of­fer­ings.

“The wel­comed in­vest­ment will cre­ate hun­dreds of job op­por­tu­ni­ties, di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly,” Gopee-Scoon said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gopee-Scoon added there is a strong link­age with agri­cul­ture, not­ing that farm­ers and fish­er­men, pro­duc­ers of chick­en and oth­er meats will be able to sup­ply di­rect­ly to the ho­tel.

The Min­istry of Trade al­so de­tailed back­ground in­for­ma­tion about the ini­tia­tive, not­ing that in 2021 lo­cal com­pa­ny, Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Ltd, signed on to con­struct the ho­tel.

Gopee-Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment made a de­ci­sion in Jan­u­ary 2021 to in­vite of­fers for the de­vel­op­ment of a ho­tel in Rocky Point, through the Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK), a spe­cial pur­pose state com­pa­ny un­der the Min­istry of Trade.

On June 9, 2022 Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for a CEC for the es­tab­lish­ment of a 200-room ho­tel, bun­ga­lows, vil­las, pri­vate res­i­dences and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed fa­cil­i­ties on 11.99 hectares of land at Rocky Point, Shir­van Road, Mt Irvine, To­ba­go. The de­vel­op­er re­ceived a 99-year lease for the land, Gopee-Scoon said, but she said she was not aware of the amount of the an­nu­al lease rental.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) de­ter­mined that it is like­ly that sig­nif­i­cant en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts can arise from this pro­posed project, and an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) was there­fore re­quest­ed in sup­port of the CEC ap­pli­ca­tion.

Con­sul­ta­tions be­tween the de­vel­op­ers and the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ue with the first stake­hold­ers’ meet­ing be­ing held on May 9, 2024, when Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels held its in­tro­duc­to­ry pub­lic meet­ing as part of its ap­pli­ca­tion for a CEC.

The min­istry ex­plained the pur­pose was to present in­for­ma­tion about the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment, to give de­tails about the EIA and to re­ceive ini­tial com­ments from key stake­hold­ers and the gen­er­al pub­lic.

The con­sul­tants con­duct­ing the EIA out­lined the ar­eas that would be cov­ered in­clud­ing the im­pact to the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment (ero­sion, drainage, waste dis­pos­al, wa­ter qual­i­ty, noise, air qual­i­ty, soil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, etc), the bi­o­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment (loss of ter­res­tri­al habi­tat, im­pact on ma­rine life, im­pact on corals, im­pact on spe­cial­ly pro­tect­ed ar­eas, etc).

The con­sul­tants al­so out­lined the im­pact of the de­vel­op­ment on the hu­man en­vi­ron­ment—which in­clude con­flicts with var­i­ous spe­cial in­ter­est groups, lo­cal job op­por­tu­ni­ties, loss of ac­cess to and use of Rocky Point Es­tate, in­creased road traf­fic, im­pact on recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties and pub­lic safe­ty—dur­ing the site prepa­ra­tion, con­struc­tion, and oc­cu­pan­cy phas­es.

The pro­posed com­ple­tion date for the EIA is April 2025, fol­low­ing which it is es­ti­mat­ed that the CEC will be de­ter­mined by Au­gust 2025.

The min­istry em­pha­sised the project will boost em­ploy­ment for the sis­ter is­land, with the ex­pec­ta­tion that about 750 peo­ple would be em­ployed dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase of the project and that over 221 peo­ple will get per­ma­nent jobs on the com­plex. Most of those em­ployed are ex­pect­ed to be from To­ba­go,

It added that dur­ing op­er­a­tion of the tourism prop­er­ty, the project will em­ploy high­ly trained per­son­nel such as chefs, man­agers and en­gi­neers, as well as less trained po­si­tions such as kitchen staff, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and clean­ers and bar­tenders.

Fur­ther, the min­istry said the Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel, be­ing the first in­ter­na­tion­al brand for sev­er­al years, will raise the over­all ap­peal of To­ba­go and com­ple­ment the ex­pan­sion of the ANR Robin­son air­port.

It will al­so raise the over­all stan­dards and qual­i­ty of ser­vice, so that oth­er ho­tels will sub­se­quent­ly in­vest in the im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vice.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has al­so en­dorsed the Rocky Point project, say­ing gov­ern­ment in­tends to do every­thing to sup­port its cre­ation.

He was re­spond­ing, in part, to the con­cerns raised by To­ba­go’s surf­ing com­mu­ni­ty, res­i­dents and al­so from those who are wor­ried about the im­pact of the de­vel­op­ment dur­ing the first of­fi­cial stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion.

Speak­ing at the re­cent “Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter” at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary Fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go the Prime Min­is­ter said he had tak­en note of the con­sul­ta­tion for the ho­tel de­vel­op­ment.

He said To­ba­go need­ed the project.

“You need it. And if you could tell me how Rocky Point Ho­tel will stop waves from com­ing in down be­hind Mount Irvine for you to surf on...I will give back my ge­og­ra­phy de­gree,” Row­ley had said.

The Min­istry of Trade al­so main­tained that an in­vest­ment in tourism is an in­vest­ment in pros­per­i­ty.

It not­ed that trav­el and tourism, as a sec­tor, is boom­ing glob­al­ly and will con­tin­ue to do so for some time. It adding that it is im­per­a­tive that T&T pos­sess the nec­es­sary pol­i­cy frame­work and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to ben­e­fit from and con­tribute to this de­vel­op­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the Eco­nom­ic Im­pact Re­search (EIR) Re­port of The World Trav­el & Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC), 2024 is pro­ject­ed to be a record-break­ing year for trav­el and tourism.

The sec­tor’s glob­al eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion is set to reach an all-time high of US$11.1 tril­lion, gen­er­at­ing US$1 in every US$10 world­wide.

The min­istry al­so not­ed da­ta from the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL) show­ing that To­ba­go’s ac­com­mo­da­tion in­ven­to­ry to­talled 2,596 rooms for 2023, with just un­der half (1,233) be­ing ho­tel rooms.

Al­though this can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly meet the de­mands of in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals (pri­mar­i­ly from the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many and the US), and many oth­ers from Trinidad, To­ba­go’s low oc­cu­pan­cy rates can be al­le­vi­at­ed by the in­tro­duc­tion of an in­ter­na­tion­al brand, which brings with it not on­ly ap­peal, but stan­dards and qual­i­ty that vis­i­tors know and ex­pect, it fur­ther not­ed.

“This ini­tia­tive, will def­i­nite­ly mod­ernise and im­prove the per­for­mance of the ac­com­mo­da­tion/lodg­ing sec­tor in To­ba­go so that it be­comes more com­pet­i­tive, prof­itable, and sus­tain­able.

“The op­ti­mal ac­com­mo­da­tion mix in­clud­ing the type, range and qual­i­ty of lodg­ing of­fered, will as­sist in the mar­ket po­si­tion­ing of the To­ba­go, and raise its pro­file as a des­ti­na­tion that com­bines na­ture, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and qual­i­ty,” the min­istry added.