Farley still waiting for Sandals’ reply on hotel project

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Two months af­ter Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, To­ba­go of­fi­cials and key stake­hold­ers unan­i­mous­ly agreed to re-in­vite San­dals Re­sorts to re­con­sid­er in­vest­ing in To­ba­go, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the ball re­mains in San­dals’ court.

In April, San­dals CEO Adam Stew­art gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to the then-gov­ern­ment and tourism stake­hold­ers, where he made his in­ter­est clear on pos­si­bly re­turn­ing to To­ba­go.

Stew­art al­so said if the re­sort brand de­cides to move for­ward, it is pre­pared to spend its own mon­ey to build a ho­tel.

That marked a shift from the orig­i­nal mod­el, where the gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to con­struct the plant.

The pro­posed San­dals To­ba­go project is seen by stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the ho­tel and busi­ness sec­tors, as a po­ten­tial game-chang­er for the is­land’s tourism econ­o­my, promis­ing jobs, in­ter­na­tion­al air­lift and in­creased for­eign in­vest­ment.

How­ev­er, since that meet­ing, there has been no word from San­dals on whether the pro­pos­al is still un­der ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on this, Au­gus­tine said, “Well, the ball is now in San­dals’ court, in that we have in­di­cat­ed, and I have in­di­cat­ed, even post that meet­ing and post the elec­tion, that we are still open for busi­ness and we await their pro­pos­al. Should they de­sire to re­turn to be one, then we will look good through the vet­ting process and move where that is con­cerned …” Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

At the time of the April meet­ing, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he was hope­ful To­ba­go would be­come San­dals’ sixth new in­vest­ment in the re­gion.

But while San­dals weighs its op­tions, Au­gus­tine said the THA is al­so fo­cus­ing on an­oth­er large-scale ho­tel project that could help boost tourism.

“The Mar­riott, which is to be at Back Bay, that’s some­thing that we are look­ing at the mo­ment, and that will con­tin­ue to get our sup­port so we get that de­vel­op­ment go­ing as soon as pos­si­ble,” Au­gus­tine said.

Al­so con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj said he had no up­date on the San­dals pro­pos­al.

At­tempts to reach San­dals own­er Adam Stew­art via phone call, What­sApp, and email were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

San­dals first pro­posed a beach­es-brand­ed ho­tel in To­ba­go in 2017, with plans to build at Buc­coo Es­tate and Gold­en Grove. How­ev­er, the project faced heavy crit­i­cism over trans­paren­cy, land use and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. By 2019, San­dals pulled out, cit­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty and a mis­un­der­stand­ing of its brand.

It wasn’t un­til March this year that talks of San­dals in To­ba­go resur­faced when, as a fi­nal act for To­ba­go be­fore step­ping down from of­fice, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said his on­ly re­gret was not se­cur­ing a San­dals re­sort for the is­land.

He then an­nounced that he had se­cured an au­di­ence with Stew­art, hav­ing asked him to take an­oth­er look at re­con­sid­er­ing the ho­tel in­vest­ment in To­ba­go.