Sandals pulls out of Tobago Project

PORT OF SPAIN--Too much bad­ger­ing and neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty are be­ing blamed for San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al’s pull­out from the To­ba­go project by its Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Geb­hard Rain­er.

  The pull­out was re­vealed at a me­dia con­fer­ence Tuesday, at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, chaired by Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

  There was no hint of the col­lapse of ne­go­ti­a­tions as the me­dia wait­ed for the end of a closed-door meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, Young, Rain­er and San­dal’s deputy chair­man Adam Stew­art.

 Less than two weeks ago Row­ley boast­ed that San­dals would be one of the linch­pins of not just To­ba­go’s econ­o­my but that of the over­all coun­try. The Prime Min­is­ter and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter dis­missed those crit­ics who cast doubt on the va­lid­i­ty of the ne­go­ti­a­tions and the im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment.

  Rain­er in­sist­ed that they have re­ceived con­stant and on­go­ing neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty over the last two and a half years since the in­cep­tion of the project and added that the re­ports could have even­tu­al­ly have a neg­a­tive im­pact on its brand. He stressed that ob­jec­tions to the project failed to take in­to ac­count the pos­i­tive im­pact such a re­sort project would have on To­ba­go’s tourism prospects.  

  Rain­er emphasized the im­pact of their op­er­a­tions on lo­cal economies and the di­rect and in­di­rect ben­e­fit to sev­er­al sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture, trans­porta­tion and even oth­er ho­tel prop­er­ties.

  In ex­tend­ing grat­i­tude and thanks to Dr. Row­ley and Min­is­ter Young for their “un­wa­ver­ing sup­port and con­sis­tent trans­paren­cy and di­rect­ness through­out the process.” Rain­er stressed that there was “nev­er a shad­ow of a doubt what the prime minister and the min­is­ter are in­tend­ing to do for the good of T&T, specif­i­cal­ly To­ba­go.

  “A very trans­par­ent process…we are a com­pa­ny that works on the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy, on the prin­ci­ple of hon­esty and the prin­ci­ple of liv­ing and work­ing and ben­e­fit­ting com­mu­ni­ties that we are op­er­at­ing in,” Rain­er said.

  Re­fer­ring to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Rain­er made it clear that both par­ties signed it as an in­di­ca­tion of good faith. He dis­closed that there are no signed agree­ments that would cre­ate or would have cre­at­ed any li­a­bil­i­ty on ei­ther par­ty.

  He said San­dals worked in good faith and at their own risk, “which means that there is no cost from San­dals that would be passed on to the T&T gov­ern­ment. There are no costs in­volved. We have worked on our own risk; any cost that we have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from pre­lim­i­nary de­signs any oth­er ex­pens­es are all our ex­pens­es,” Rain­er said.

  Young said it was a sad and dis­ap­point­ing day for T&T that saw a hand­ful of peo­ple, “some with agen­das and some with per­son­al agen­das in par­tic­u­lar, chase away one of the best brands of the Caribbean from T&T.”

  Just over two months ago, on No­vem­ber 1, dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley ad­mit­ted that T&T’s back would be against the wall if San­dals Re­sorts pulled out of build­ing two ho­tels in To­ba­go. The prime min­is­ter said then that quite a few de­trac­tors have been say­ing that Gov­ern­ment has not been fol­low­ing prop­er pro­cure­ment process­es with San­dals In­ter­na­tion­al since the sign­ing of a MOU.

  Row­ley said then that they had no in­for­ma­tion to hide and de­scribed those sug­gest­ing some el­e­ments of se­cre­cy in the ne­go­ti­a­tions as mis­chie­vous and not fa­mil­iar with the con­duct of busi­ness.­