Hilton Trinidad shifts to state-owned, Hilton-operated model

The Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre will re­main un­der Hilton man­age­ment but will now be ful­ly owned by the State fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of a new own­er­ship and man­age­ment arrange­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment, through Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (e TecK), has ac­quired all is­sued and out­stand­ing shares of Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed un­der a Share Pur­chase Agree­ment.

The trans­ac­tion ef­fec­tive­ly ends the pre­vi­ous land­lord-and-ten­ant arrange­ment, un­der which e TecK owned the prop­er­ty and leased the ho­tel to Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment said the pre­vi­ous lease was ap­proach­ing ex­piry when the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice, with no agree­ments hav­ing been ex­e­cut­ed be­tween e TecK and Hilton on a pro­posed new ho­tel man­age­ment arrange­ment.

It said this had left sev­er­al le­gal, fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional mat­ters un­re­solved, in­clud­ing arrange­ments for emer­gency and ren­o­va­tion works at the ho­tel.

Un­der the new struc­ture, Hilton will con­tin­ue to man­age and op­er­ate the ho­tel un­der a Ho­tel Man­age­ment Agree­ment, while e TecK, through its sub­sidiary HotelTT As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, will hold own­er­ship of the ho­tel as­set.

The for­mer Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed has been re­named HotelTT As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed fol­low­ing e TecK’s ac­qui­si­tion of its shares.

The Gov­ern­ment said HotelTT is a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of e TecK, which it­self is whol­ly owned by the State. HotelTT will serve as the as­set-hold­ing com­pa­ny for the ho­tel and lands and over­see the State’s own­er­ship in­ter­est.

The Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre will re­tain its Hilton brand­ing, with Hilton con­tin­u­ing to over­see day-to-day man­age­ment, hos­pi­tal­i­ty op­er­a­tions, ser­vice stan­dards and guest ex­pe­ri­ence.

The ex­e­cu­tion of a Deed of Sur­ren­der for­mal­ly brings the pre­vi­ous lease arrange­ment to an end and clears the way for the new own­er­ship struc­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment said reser­va­tion sys­tems and book­ing chan­nels will al­so re­open, al­low­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al guests to make reser­va­tions.

For em­ploy­ees, the Gov­ern­ment said there will be no im­me­di­ate changes aris­ing from the trans­ac­tion. Staff will re­tain their jobs, with their ex­ist­ing du­ties, re­port­ing arrange­ments, work sched­ules, salaries and ben­e­fits re­main­ing un­changed.

The Ho­tel Man­age­ment Agree­ment has an ini­tial six-month term, with pro­vi­sion for a fur­ther six-month re­new­al sub­ject to agree­ment be­tween the par­ties.

The Gov­ern­ment said the arrange­ment pro­vides op­er­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity while e TecK as­sess­es the ho­tel’s longer-term arrange­ments and pri­ori­tis­es nec­es­sary ren­o­va­tion works.

The trans­ac­tion al­so en­sures the ho­tel re­mains un­der State own­er­ship while re­tain­ing Hilton’s in­ter­na­tion­al brand and man­age­ment ex­per­tise.