By Dayle Dasilva
The Holiday Inn Express
& Suites, located at Diamond, was handed over to the Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines on November 16.
And as of today, November 22, 2024, the 59,000 square foot facility will officially open its doors for business.
Already, the facility is said to record full booking capacity by December 7, when it will serve as the temporary home to the visiting Bangladesh and West Indies Cricket teams.
The EC$52 million Holiday Inn Express & Suites features four floors of space, 93 rooms, 18 suites, two meeting rooms, a fitness centre and one outdoor pool, which, according to Romel Ollivierre, Lead Architect, is a break from the traditional Holiday Inn tradition of having indoor pools.
The facility also boasts larger than usual rooms and an additional conference room seating 50 people.
Part funding to the tune of some EC$28.9 was provided by the CARICOM Development Fund (CDF) whose Director, Regional Development Division, Lennox Forte, was on hand last Saturday to say that the CDF put high expectations on its investments in the accommodation and tourism sectors.
“The CDF is committed and mandated to finance projects like this that support the advancement of cohesion in the CARICOM Single Market,” he said, adding that it was the CDF’s vision for the hotel to serve as a catalyst for private investment in the accommodation sector
Finance Minister, Camillo Gonsalves said that with the construction and now operation of an international airport, the government took the decision to get involved in improving the room stock.
That meant, Gonslaves said, “Getting more rooms on the island until the private sector can pick up the slack and move beyond what we do.”
And the strategy was to attract hotels at various value points, realising that some visitors may not be able to afford high end luxury hotels.
But while the Holiday Inn Express is the second government-owned hotel in the country, Gonsalves sought to establish that the government was not in the business of becoming hoteliers, and that it remained determined to have the facility managed by a local entity.
In the interim however, as it was designed and built by the government, “then we also for the time being want to run it ourselves.”
A local company has been formed to oversee the daily operations of the hotel.
The facility has a staff complement of 50 which represents the top three percent of the 1,000 persons who applied, Gonsalves said
.