Govt. no longer pursuing casino for Marriott Hotel - NICIL CEO

Govt. no longer pursuing casino for Marriott Hotel – NICIL CEO

Apr 07, 2020 News

In light of the tremendous success the Guyana Marriott Hotel has enjoyed as a result of the nation’s budding oil industry, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Colvin Heath-London says that a casino for the hotel is no longer being pursued.

: The Guyana Marriott Hotel

NICIL’s CEO, Colvin Heath-London

During an exclusive interview with Kaieteur News recently, the official said, “We are not putting any casino there. Casinos are placed at hotels for one main reason – to improve room count…The casino was an excellent idea from the previous administration. Why? Because with a Marriott coming to Guyana, at the time the project was conceived, there was not much business coming to Guyana, so that was on the table until 2018”.
The CEO added, “But with the oil and gas, the hotel is at 93 to 94 percent occupancy. One day a room rate is US$300 and the next it is US$800… and people are paying for it….Many times you can’t get rooms there, so putting a casino adds no benefit.”
London said that instead of a casino, what is needed is another 100 rooms. “That is why when NICIL did its studies and from that, realized that Guyana is short 2000 rooms, it went out there to find hotels and convince them to come and build in Guyana hence you saw the Hilton, the Hyatt and the Holiday Inn coming.”
Prior to the new decision to scrap the idea of a casino, the coalition administration had struggled for some time with trying to find an investor to take on the establishment of the entertainment complex for the US$60M Hotel. In the financial plans, the casino was considered a critical component in helping Marriott to repay its debts, which stands at around US$30M.
In 2017, after being forced to step in and take over the bank payments, the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited had advertised through its Atlantic Hotel Inc. (AHI), the company that owns Marriott, for operators of the casino.
Several bids came in. One was reportedly from the Princess Group, which runs the Princess Casino, Providence. Another one reportedly came from Suriname.
Kaieteur News was told that all was going well in the assessment until late 2018 when NICIL and PricewaterhouseCoopers reportedly found out about an issue that raised suspicions about transparency and collusion. The matter was raised at the government level and a decision was subsequently taken to cancel the tender. There have been no other calls for interest since then.