Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad is look­ing for­ward to the open­ing of the $500 mil­lion Mar­riott re­sort at Rocky Point, To­ba­go, in 2029. Hadad, a for­mer head of the To­ba­go arm of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, said the is­land could not af­ford to lose the de­vel­op­ment.

The sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny was held on Tues­day and at­tend­ed by sev­er­al dig­ni­taries, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

The project, led by Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels chair­man John Aboud, will in­clude a four-star, 200-room ho­tel, vil­las, town­hous­es and recre­ation­al ameni­ties. It is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate more than 500 jobs when com­plet­ed.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Hadad said To­ba­go’s ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor need­ed the eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus af­ter miss­ing out on ma­jor projects in the past. She cit­ed an un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to at­tract a Four Sea­sons ho­tel and the con­tro­ver­sial with­draw­al of San­dals in 2019.

“We should have had a Four Sea­sons. In­stead of us invit­ing, we gave back mon­ey to the own­ers and we re­ject­ed that. Then we al­so treat­ed San­dals and their in­vest­ment very poor­ly, so we lost on that,” Hadad said.

“Strike one, strike two, and I want to re­al­ly con­grat­u­late the prime min­is­ter and Mr Au­gus­tine for al­low­ing this to take place in terms of the sup­port and what­ev­er was need­ed to make sure we didn’t lose it three times. Three times and you are out.”

Hadad said turn­ing away Mar­riott would have se­ri­ous­ly harmed To­ba­go’s tourism ef­forts by dis­cour­ag­ing fu­ture in­vestors.

“This was our last hur­rah for en­cour­ag­ing oth­er peo­ple to recog­nise the val­ue that we need in To­ba­go for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, pri­vate in­vest­ment, and the pri­vate sec­tor tak­ing this econ­o­my and re­al­ly work­ing eco­nom­ics,” she said.

Hadad de­scribed as wise Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments about the Gov­ern­ment’s in­abil­i­ty to man­age ho­tels.

On the open­ing of the new air­port ter­mi­nal, Hadad called on au­thor­i­ties to en­sure the vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ence matched the bil­lion-dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty.

“I hope it brings the best ser­vice, so it’s im­por­tant we know what ser­vice is to the peo­ple pass­ing through. That we be­come a good con­ver­sa­tion, that we be­come a good ex­pe­ri­ence, and we treat peo­ple like gems,” she said.

She al­so praised for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for “lay­ing the foun­da­tion” for the new air­port. Hadad said she took is­sue with Au­gus­tine’s com­ment at the air­port’s launch that the fa­cil­i­ty had been a shell when the PNM gov­ern­ment left of­fice last year.

“No, it was more than a shell, and as we speak to­day, it’s now op­er­a­tional,” she said.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion head Regi­nald Mac Lean has al­so en­dorsed the project and said he would mon­i­tor con­struc­tion to en­sure the de­vel­op­er com­plies with en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments.