Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is mak­ing one last at­tempt to con­vince San­dals Re­sorts to re­con­sid­er in­vest­ing in To­ba­go by build­ing a ho­tel on the is­land.

As a fi­nal act for To­ba­go be­fore step­ping down, Dr Row­ley stat­ed his on­ly re­gret was not se­cur­ing a San­dals re­sort for the is­land and hopes to do so be­fore his de­par­ture.

Speak­ing dur­ing his fi­nal mes­sage as PM to To­bag­o­ni­ans dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the new To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal yes­ter­day, he re­vealed that he has per­son­al­ly reached out to the San­dals own­er with a plea to take an­oth­er look at the is­land.

He called out Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke to get in­volved in mak­ing it hap­pen.

“I didn’t give up af­ter all that (first failed at­tempt). Re­cent­ly, I spoke to the lead­er­ship at San­dals, and I asked them to come look at this again, and if I was the prob­lem, I wouldn’t be there to­mor­row,” Row­ley said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, San­dals has agreed to send its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Adam Stew­art to To­ba­go to re­assess the is­land’s tourism po­ten­tial. He urged Au­gus­tine, Duke, and all To­bag­o­ni­ans to come to­geth­er and sell the is­land’s po­ten­tial.

“And when he comes, he will meet Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and you To­bag­o­ni­ans, es­pe­cial­ly you Far­ley Au­gus­tine and you Wat­son (Duke).

“I’m invit­ing both of you from this plat­form when­ev­er Adam Stew­art comes to Trinidad and To­ba­go. When he comes here in Au­gust, you, you, you, and all of you, with the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, for the peo­ple of To­ba­go, sit down with him. Sit down with him. And all of you be­come sales­men and sales­women for the po­ten­tial of To­ba­go, and suc­cess will be that you all man­age to con­vince them to look at To­ba­go again and give To­ba­go one or more of those San­dals projects that the Caribbean has been ben­e­fit­ing from.”

The PM had ear­li­er said the San­dals of­fi­cial was com­ing in March.

Row­ley lament­ed that the pre­vi­ous at­tempt to bring San­dals to To­ba­go had failed due to a lack of sup­port from To­bag­o­ni­ans, in­flu­enced by po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions.

He said fail­ing to bring the ho­tel chain re­mains a re­gret as he leaves of­fice.

“I’m ex­treme­ly sad­dened by the fact that our at­tempt to bring the San­dals mod­el to To­ba­go failed as a re­sult of To­bag­o­ni­ans not em­brac­ing it in the way that we should. And the rea­son for that, I must say, is that some of my po­lit­i­cal col­leagues be­lieve that they can sep­a­rate na­tion­al suc­cess from po­lit­i­cal suc­cess. The point is, if good comes for the peo­ple of To­ba­go, it comes for all of us.”

He stressed that the Caribbean re­mains one of the world’s top va­ca­tion des­ti­na­tions, and oth­er is­lands have cap­i­talised on tourism growth through ma­jor ho­tel in­vest­ments.

“Bar­ba­dos has end­less ho­tel rooms. Just look out the win­dow when land­ing in Bar­ba­dos, and you see miles of ho­tels. The last time I was there, two weeks ago, they had six large ho­tels un­der con­struc­tion right now, adding to their ho­tel stock.”

Us­ing San­dals’ suc­cess in oth­er Caribbean na­tions as an ex­am­ple, Row­ley ar­gued that To­ba­go should not miss out on the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“If San­dals is good enough for the Ba­hamas, for Ja­maica, for An­tigua, for Saint Vin­cent, for Grena­da, and for the rest of the world, it’s good enough for To­ba­go. Be­cause it is the most suc­cess­ful in­dige­nous tourism mod­el in the re­gion, and I say it’s a world beat­er.”

Row­ley al­so stressed that with­out ad­di­tion­al ho­tel rooms, To­ba­go would strug­gle to at­tract the nec­es­sary air­lift, mak­ing tourism de­vel­op­ment dif­fi­cult.

“If you don’t have the ho­tel rooms, the planes have no rea­son to come to you, and if you don’t have the air­line air­lift, then your ho­tel rooms are a waste of time and mon­ey. So the two things have to go to­geth­er.”

He point­ed to the im­pact of San­dals on Saint Vin­cent’s tourism in­dus­try as proof of its ef­fec­tive­ness.

“I can tell you, Saint Vin­cent has now be­come a ma­jor play­er with re­spect to ar­rivals. That on­ly hap­pened be­cause they have a San­dals. And since they’ve had it, their tourism has gone sky-high.”

In ad­di­tion to ho­tel in­vest­ment, Row­ley said an­oth­er cru­cial com­po­nent for To­ba­go’s tourism growth is the con­struc­tion of a ma­ri­na.

“This is a turn­ing point. The quest to be­come a tourism des­ti­na­tion with a se­ri­ous air­lift and a wel­com­ing call has be­gun in To­ba­go. We want to be a part of that. And the oth­er miss­ing com­po­nent is a ma­ri­na.”

Row­ley said his re­newed push to bring San­dals back comes as To­ba­go faces eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and strug­gles to boost its tourism in­dus­try. With Stew­art set to vis­it To­ba­go, Row­ley has placed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on To­ba­go’s lead­ers to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Duke, Ho­tel As­so­ci­a­tion wel­come the move

Mean­while, PDP leader Wat­son Duke said it was a won­der­ful project. Duke, who stood at the front of the crit­i­cism of the project then, said he is open to meet­ing with San­dals. How­ev­er, he said it must be on To­bag­o­ni­ans’ terms.

“I was nev­er against San­dals; I was against the method­ol­o­gy used to build San­dals, and I will al­ways be against it. I was against where the Gov­ern­ment agrees to build every­thing and ask San­dals to come and op­er­ate it and put our peo­ple as wait­ing boys and girls.”

For Al­pha Lorde, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, it is a step in the right di­rec­tion.

“I’m look­ing at it from a much broad­er con­text as an in­ter­na­tion­al brand and in­ter­na­tion­al play­er per­spec­tive, and I think it is more than time To­ba­go has more than one in­ter­na­tion­al play­er that can sup­port the in­dus­try.”

He is al­so look­ing for­ward to the Mar­riott project cur­rent­ly on the board for the is­land.

What hap­pened to San­dals To­ba­go

The San­dals To­ba­go project was a ma­jor tourism ini­tia­tive an­nounced in 2017 by Row­ley to boost To­ba­go’s econ­o­my. The Gov­ern­ment planned to build the lux­u­ry San­dals re­sort on prime beach­front land at Buc­coo and Gold­en Grove, aim­ing to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors and cre­ate jobs. How­ev­er, the project quick­ly faced back­lash over en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, land ac­qui­si­tion dis­putes, and al­le­ga­tions of a lack of trans­paren­cy.

Ac­tivists warned about po­ten­tial dam­age to Buc­coo Reef, while crit­ics ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s se­cre­cy on tax con­ces­sions and pub­lic spend­ing.

Many To­bag­o­ni­ans felt ex­clud­ed from the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, fu­elling pub­lic re­sis­tance.

By ear­ly 2019, San­dals with­drew from the deal, cit­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty and the con­tentious po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. The Gov­ern­ment blamed mis­in­for­ma­tion and op­po­si­tion re­sis­tance—par­tic­u­lar­ly from mem­bers of the PDP, which at the time in­clud­ed Au­gus­tine, Duke, and sit­ting Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith Breb­nor—while oth­ers ar­gued that the deal lacked prop­er con­sul­ta­tion and plan­ning.