There have been a few in­quiries in­to the 178-room Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in To­ba­go that is still up for sale.

This af­ter Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTecK) which falls un­der the Min­istry of Trade, is­sued a Re­quest for Pro­pos­al of­fer­ing three op­tions in the dai­ly news­pa­pers last week.

Op­tion 1: Brand op­er­a­tor of in­ter­na­tion­al renown who would op­er­ate the ho­tel at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort, or a third-par­ty ho­tel man­age­ment op­er­a­tor with the brand be­ing fran­chised.

Op­tion 2: Strate­gic part­ner who will pro­vide cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and bring the nec­es­sary man­age­ment and brand­ing ex­per­tise to the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort, which may en­tail the part­ner ac­quir­ing par­tial, ma­jor­i­ty, or full own­er­ship of the ho­tel via di­vest­ment.

Op­tion 3. Pur­chase of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort ho­tel as­set. Site vis­its are sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 29 to 31, with the sub­mis­sion of pro­pos­als set for a Feb­ru­ary 20 dead­line.

This is the third time eTecK is go­ing back on the mar­ket. In April 2022, the state en­ter­prise in­vit­ed ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est (EOI) sub­mis­sions, and again in Ju­ly 2024.

Back in Oc­to­ber 2019, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment was in talks with Unit­ed States-based trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty con­glom­er­ate Ap­ple Leisure Group to take over the op­er­a­tion of Mag­dale­na Grand.

Ap­ple Leisure Group is the par­ent of re­sort and brand man­age­ment com­pa­ny AM­Re­sorts and its loy­al­ty pro­gramme, Un­lim­it­ed Va­ca­tion Club.

The deal, how­ev­er, did not pan out for rea­sons not pub­licly stat­ed.

Gov­ern­ment sources at eTeck told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that when last they en­quired, two com­pa­nies showed in­ter­est in re­sort prop­er­ty, but they stat­ed that oth­er com­pa­nies have un­til Feb­ru­ary 20, 2025, to throw their hat in the ring.

How­ev­er, the source is quite cer­tain as to how the process was de­vel­oped for the new RFP and that the lev­el of ad­ver­tise­ment it will at­tract more in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon said a val­u­a­tion of the ho­tel prop­er­ty is cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en and will be com­plet­ed by Jan­u­ary 31.

Asked if any in­ter­na­tion­al brand has ex­pressed in­ter­est in the prop­er­ty, Gopee-Scoon said “The RFP clos­es Feb­ru­ary 20, 2025.”

As to how much Mag­dale­na cost to con­struct, the min­is­ter stat­ed “The ho­tel was not con­struct­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. In 2008, the ho­tel was pur­chased by the then Gov­ern­ment for TT$139 mil­lion.”

The ques­tion was asked as to what be­came of the sea wall that was sup­posed to be built, Gopee-Scoon said work to par­tial­ly ad­dress the on­go­ing coastal ero­sion at the prop­er­ty was com­plet­ed by eTecK in Fis­cal 2024.

The re­sort was opened ini­tial­ly as the To­ba­go Hilton in 2000 and closed in 2008. It was re­brand­ed as the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in 2011.

On whether up­grades have been un­der­tak­en in re­cent years, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that eTecK has un­der­tak­en up­grades to the ho­tel in re­cent years in­clud­ing; an up­grade of the golf course.

She said the restora­tion and im­proved man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties have yield­ed tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits, as ev­i­denced by sev­er­al ma­jor high-lev­el tour­na­ments that were held in 2024, that have en­hanced the re­sort’s rep­u­ta­tion as a pre­mier golf­ing site.

Vi­sion need­ed

To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man Mar­tin George said a vi­sion of sell­ing the largest To­ba­go ho­tels is need­ed as right now it is be­ing wast­ed.

George point­ed out that the is­land’s tourism prod­uct must be­come more com­pet­i­tive, and it can­not be just cen­tred around the mom-and-pop op­er­a­tors.  

“When you look at the Caribbean and you recog­nise the high-end ho­tel rooms with in­ter­na­tion­al brand op­er­a­tors, those in au­thor­i­ty must con­duct a prop­er eval­u­a­tion as to what To­ba­go has to of­fer and move in that di­rec­tion. That is what is go­ing to dri­ve your room stock up. That is what is go­ing to bring the flights and bring the air­lift to the is­land and that is what is go­ing to help put your stamp on the tourism mar­ket in the Caribbean as a des­ti­na­tion. So, we need to be se­ri­ous about it,” George de­tailed.  

“The re­al­i­ty is that every­body is step­ping up their game since St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines got the San­dals re­sort, they have been go­ing guns, they have mas­sive air­lift com­ing in­to St. Vin­cent. Yes, we have a nice fan­cy new ter­mi­nal to come on board soon for To­ba­go but with­out the air­lift, the ter­mi­nal is go­ing to be use­less,” he lament­ed.

Out­right pur­chase  

For­mer To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Di­ane Hadad said the op­tion of some­one out­right­ly buy­ing the ho­tel would be a bet­ter busi­ness suc­cess, be­cause once the gov­ern­ment is in­volved, there is al­ways the in­ter­fer­ence, not nec­es­sar­i­ly from run­ning it, but the pay­ments to main­tain and up­keep the prop­er­ties, that are un­der their purview.

“I want to imag­ine that maybe the best thing both for Mag­dale­na and To­ba­go, is an out­right pur­chase. But let’s see who shows in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in To­ba­go. The air­port speaks of a par­tic­u­lar lev­el of tourism that we want to in­vest in or an­tic­i­pate or mar­ket the prod­uct,” she dis­closed.

Hadad point­ed out that there’s still talk on the ground of in­ter­est from San­dals Re­sort or that the au­thor­i­ties are go­ing af­ter San­dals.  

“I’m not sure which one it is, but you know, the ground speaks dif­fer­ent­ly. And then there’s still the Rocky Point Ho­tel project, where they in­ter­viewed their in­ter­est and in­vest­ment,” she added.