By Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Mount­ing com­plaints from vis­i­tors about To­ba­go’s largest ho­tel — rang­ing from sewage leaks to noisy con­struc­tion and mouldy rooms with bro­ken fix­tures— have thrust the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in­to an un­wel­come spot­light, even as man­age­ment in­sists guests are not in dan­ger and gov­ern­ment promis­es a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to its fu­ture in the up­com­ing bud­get.

On Tri­pad­vi­sor, a se­ries of re­views post­ed in re­cent months paint­ed a trou­bling pic­ture. Guests de­scribed be­ing moved three or four times due to poor room con­di­tions, re­port­ed sewage leak­ing in­to the car park and com­plained about the dis­rup­tion caused by on­go­ing ren­o­va­tions.

One guest wrote that con­struc­tion noise and dust ru­ined their hol­i­day, while an­oth­er said they were left frus­trat­ed af­ter deal­ing with “un­ac­cept­able” room stan­dards. Oth­ers com­plained about out­dat­ed fa­cil­i­ties and a sense that the re­sort, once mar­ket­ed as a four-star prop­er­ty, had fall­en in­to de­cline.

Com­plaints were not on­ly left on­line. Pho­tographs tak­en by a guest on Au­gust 17 showed clear signs of ne­glect. A string to pic­tures and videos was sent to Guardian Me­dia by a dis­sat­is­fied vis­i­tor who said she was amazed by its state. (See side­bar):

The im­ages re­vealed the kind of struc­tur­al de­cay that aligned with vis­i­tor ac­counts, rais­ing ques­tions about whether guests were be­ing placed at risk. But, the com­plain­ing vis­i­tor com­mend­ed staff for its hos­pi­tal­i­ty

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the prop­er­ty in Sep­tem­ber, many of the same is­sues re­mained vis­i­ble. It was ob­served that bal­conies and walk­ways were roped off with “Do Not En­ter” signs; beams where chunks of con­crete had fall­en away to ex­pose re­in­force­ment steel and stair­cas­es com­plete­ly sealed with lay­ers of red dan­ger tape.

Moss streaks ran down white lat­tice­work and wood­en beams, wa­ter dam­age dis­coloured the yel­low ex­te­ri­or walls, and cracks split through struc­tur­al columns. In sev­er­al ar­eas, cor­ri­dors were blocked off while just me­tres away fam­i­lies walked to the pool and chil­dren played in the near­by play­ground.

The con­trast be­tween guests en­joy­ing their hol­i­day and the sight of taped-off, crum­bling struc­tures cre­at­ed a jar­ring scene.

Ho­tel GM: “No dan­ger­ous ar­eas”

Mag­dale­na’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Ja­son Mar­tin, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia last month, re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that guests were in dan­ger.

“Usu­al­ly when peo­ple use the word health and safe­ty, it seems to flag dan­ger, and that is not the case,” Mar­tin said. “It is an aged prop­er­ty and we have to do ren­o­va­tions at some time. In an ide­al en­vi­ron­ment, you want to close the prop­er­ty and do the ren­o­va­tions. That wasn’t ex­act­ly one of the op­tions.”

He in­sist­ed that while sec­tions of the ho­tel had to be cor­doned off, no un­safe ar­eas were left open to guests.

“We don’t have any guests walk­ing through any dan­ger­ous ar­eas,” he said. “But if you do par­tial ren­o­va­tion in phas­es, there will be some kind of dis­com­fort. Dis­com­fort to the point of where you might put up a sign and say, you can’t go to the left, you can’t go to the right, etc. But where the guests are al­lowed to ex­ist, there’s no dan­ger.”

Mar­tin ad­mit­ted the 25-year-old prop­er­ty, re­brand­ed as the Mag­dale­na Grand in 2011, re­quires ur­gent up­grades.

“This build­ing it­self is 25 years old, and it needs to get some lev­el of en­hance­ment now and then. Ide­al­ly, if we would have closed and done every­thing, but in the re­al-world cir­cum­stances, we can’t,” he ex­plained.

Ren­o­va­tions and up­grades

Mar­tin point­ed to up­grades com­plet­ed over the past two years, in­clud­ing two new el­e­va­tors, a mod­ern boil­er sys­tem, re­pairs to the swim­ming pool, trans­form­ers and kitchen fa­cil­i­ties, along with ex­pand­ed wa­ter stor­age ca­pac­i­ty to with­stand dry-sea­son short­ages.

“Yes, we have al­ways been apol­o­gis­ing, some­times even com­pen­sat­ing the guests for the in­con­ve­nience,” he ad­mit­ted. “All of them would have been in­formed in ad­vance of things we’re do­ing. Some­times when they do come, things don’t ex­act­ly go as smooth as we would like. We treat it as a sit­u­a­tion, but we’re not hid­ing this all the time.”

Still, Mar­tin said that the op­tics of vis­i­ble ren­o­va­tions posed a chal­lenge for the ho­tel.

“Do we want the up­grade to en­hance the prod­uct? Yes. If the up­grade…be­cause our tourists are trav­el­ling, it’s all about op­tics...I just don’t want to see the up­grade hap­pen­ing. Even though it is not my zone, I don’t want to see it, but we want the up­grade. See the dou­ble-edged sword there?”

He said the man­age­ment team is work­ing to com­plete the main pool project af­ter Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val but be­fore De­cem­ber. If that time­line slips, work will con­tin­ue in­to Jan­u­ary 2026.

“This year al­ready get dampered al­ready,” he said. “Notwith­stand­ing that, we come from our oil spill the pre­vi­ous year. And then this year, while all that’s go­ing on, we’ve got the worst sar­gas­sum in the his­to­ry of the ho­tel. So we al­ready got our beat up here. It’s best we get every­thing done this year and get a bet­ter year next year”

Tan­coo: “Raised in the bud­get”

The guest crit­i­cism and on­go­ing works was brought to the at­ten­tion of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who con­firmed in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia that the mat­ter will be ad­dressed in the na­tion­al bud­get.

“I would look in­to it. It is some­thing I’m sure would be raised in the bud­get,” Tan­coo said. “I am not ful­ly aware of what’s hap­pen­ing there but I’m glad you brought it to my at­ten­tion so I would look in­to it. We want to deal with Mag­dale­na dif­fer­ent­ly from how it was han­dled in the past.”

Tan­coo al­so promised to dis­close in the bud­get both the mon­ey al­ready spent on the re­sort and what gov­ern­ment in­tends to do next, Tan­coo said.

A trou­bled his­to­ry

The Mag­dale­na’s prob­lems are not new. Since 2019, pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions have tried and failed to find a buy­er or strate­gic part­ner for the ho­tel. In that year, for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, an­nounced talks with the Unit­ed States-based Ap­ple Leisure Group, par­ent com­pa­ny of AM­Re­sorts. That deal nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

In April 2022, the re­sort was again put on the mar­ket through an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est is­sued by state-owned Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK). The process of­fered three op­tions: se­cur­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al brand op­er­a­tor, find­ing a strate­gic in­vestor, or sell­ing the re­sort out­right.

By Jan­u­ary this year, eTecK had reis­sued a re­vised Re­quest for Pro­pos­als, with a Feb­ru­ary 20 dead­line. For­mer min­is­ter of trade and in­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon con­firmed that at least two com­pa­nies had shown in­ter­est.

The State ac­quired the prop­er­ty in 2008 for $139 mil­lion. Orig­i­nal­ly opened as the To­ba­go Hilton in 2000, it shut its doors eight years lat­er be­fore be­ing re­launched as the Mag­dale­na Grand in 2011.

In the 2024 bud­get, Im­bert an­nounced that TT$56.6 mil­lion was be­ing spent to up­grade the re­sort and main­tain its four-star rat­ing. That spend­ing cov­ered im­prove­ments to the golf course, re­fur­bish­ment of rooms for the 2023 Com­mon­wealth Youth Games, and oth­er cap­i­tal works.

For To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor, the stakes are high. The 178-room, 22-suite re­sort rep­re­sents the is­land’s sin­gle largest room stock and is cen­tral to host­ing ma­jor events, from golf tour­na­ments to Car­ni­val.

“When you fly in for these big events, you want room stock,” said Mar­tin, the ho­tel’s gen­er­al man­ag­er “And though we might be 25 years old, it’s im­por­tant to men­tion, in the ab­sence of con­sult­ing, we are pret­ty much still the newest ho­tel. We are the room stock. We are the largest.”

But as guests con­tin­ue to post an­gry re­views, and as Guardian Me­dia’s vis­it con­firmed, the re­sort is vis­i­bly caught be­tween phas­es of re­pair and long-stand­ing ne­glect.

And as To­ba­go gears up for Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val, and as Par­lia­ment is set to de­liv­er the bud­get in com­ing weeks, the Mag­dale­na stands at a cross­roads.

On one hand, guests con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment bro­ken beams, mould, sewage stains, and taped-off stair­cas­es. Guardian Me­dia’s own vis­it con­firmed much of that de­cay re­mains, with en­tire wings blocked off be­hind “Do Not En­ter” signs. On the oth­er, man­age­ment ar­gues that the re­sort can­not sim­ply close its 200-room stock with­out crip­pling To­ba­go’s frag­ile tourism sec­tor.

Signs of ne­glect

* Cracks and ex­posed rust in sup­port beams and pil­lars;

* Mould grow­ing on room locks and stained bath­room doors;

* Sewage stains run­ning along tiled walk­ways and door frames;

* En­tire stair­cas­es and cor­ri­dors cor­doned off with red “Dan­ger” tape;

* Rot­ting tim­ber, peel­ing paint, and bro­ken con­crete around com­mon ar­eas.

* A burnt elec­tri­cal sock­et, with charred marks on the wall around it.