Agreement reached for Hilton Trinidad to remain open

Em­ploy­ees of Hilton Trinidad can breathe eas­i­er for the next six months at least with the sign­ing of a new agree­ment be­tween Gov­ern­ment and the in­ter­na­tion­al lux­u­ry ho­tel chain.

Af­ter months of un­cer­tain­ty, the deal will en­sure that the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre re­mains un­der Hilton’s man­age­ment while own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty, which was opened in 1962, stays with the State.

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

The Ho­tel Man­age­ment Agree­ment has an ini­tial term of six months, with an op­tion for a fur­ther six-month ex­ten­sion sub­ject to mu­tu­al agree­ment be­tween the par­ties.

It re­places the pre­vi­ous land­lord-ten­ant arrange­ment un­der which e TecK owned the prop­er­ty and leased the ho­tel to Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed and will en­sure not on­ly that staff re­tain their jobs, but with ex­ist­ing du­ties, re­port­ing re­la­tion­ships, work sched­ules, salaries and ben­e­fits.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, the lease agree­ment was near­ing ex­piry when the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice, and no for­mal agree­ments had been ex­e­cut­ed be­tween e TecK and Hilton re­gard­ing a pro­posed new ho­tel man­age­ment arrange­ment. This left sev­er­al le­gal, fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional mat­ters un­re­solved, in­clud­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for emer­gency and ren­o­va­tion works at the prop­er­ty.

Un­der the new agree­ment, 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 re­tain own­er­ship of the ho­tel as­set.

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

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

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

The ex­e­cu­tion of a Deed of Sur­ren­der for­mal­ly ends the pre­vi­ous lease arrange­ment.

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

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, the arrange­ment will pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity of op­er­a­tions while e TecK eval­u­ates the ho­tel’s long-term fu­ture and ad­vances pri­or­i­ty ren­o­va­tion works.

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