Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 25, 2012 News
While the government presses stubbornly ahead with the Marriott hotel project, occupancy rates across the sector seeks to suggest that the project lacks viability.
President of the Tourism and Hospitality Association, Daniel Gajie, told Kaieteur News that the sector lacks high-end rooms, which he rated as the standard offered by hotels such as the Pegasus and Princess Hotels.
Contacted, officials from those hotels put their average occupancy rates at just over 50 per cent. Other Georgetown hotels put their average occupancy at 60 per cent. These figures point to the fact the local hotel industry has excess capacity, except when there are major events in the country.
Robert Badal, the owner of the Pegasus Hotel, which has been against the project mainly because he sees it as unfair competition, said that with “high end rooms” comes a certain cost which guests are not willing to pay in Guyana.
He said most travelers to Georgetown who stay in the main hotels are business travelers and they are not willing to pay the US$300-US$400 for high end rooms.
“If we charge US$200 a room we wouldn’t get any guests,” Badal told Kaieteur News.
Badal said that if the project was feasible, the private sector, including him, would have jumped at it.
But he said increase in room supply without increase in demand would threaten local investors, and this should not happen.
The government has been using media houses which are supportive of its views to plug the need for the Marriott-branded hotel which is being built mainly with taxpayers’ dollars.
Badal, who has been a fierce critic of the project, has said that the government should spend taxpayers’ money on public projects that would serve the needs of the people.
It is Badal’s opinion that the Marriott-hotel project is only intended to fill the pockets of a few persons, with the project seemed bent on failure.
The project was not subjected to Parliamentary review, and the Alliance for Change (AFC) this week called for the government to halt any public spending on the project.
The project puts taxpayers at risk of losing US$48.0m plus escalation if the project fails.
The financial plan only has investors putting US$8 million in the project, with NICIL, the government’s investment arm putting US$21 million and another US$$21 million coming from a bank bond that industry sources believe has the backing of the government despite its denial.
In the arrangement with Republic Bank (Trinidad), taxpayers’ rights rank last to other investors.
The syndicated loan, as is the arrangement with Republic Bank, is one that is provided by a group of lenders and is structured, arranged and administered by one or several commercial banks or investment banks.
In this case, the loan is being administered by the Republic Bank but the government has not named the other lenders.
By agreeing to this type of loan arrangement, the government is agreeing for the investors who are part of the syndicate, to get back their investment first ahead of any other investor in the project.
So, if in a scenario where the project fails and the value of the property depreciates to a value below what the investors have plugged, then the investors will get back their money, and there would be nothing to return to NICIL, meaning that taxpayers’ dollars would go down the drain.
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