The Guyana Marriott has been holding weekly job fairs every Friday and with over 2,000 persons interviewed for various vacancies, General Manager Roberto Grisi is calling the process very successful.
He said that so far over 60 per cent of management has been hired and by December local managers will commence training. A team from Marriott has been in Guyana for weeks hosting job fairs at the hotel’s temporary administrative offices located on Lamaha Street, Georgetown.
The US$58 million hotel is expected to be handed over in January 2015 with the financing agreement for US$27 million from Republic Bank Limited in Trinidad to be finalized before this can happen. ACE Square Investments Ltd a subsidiary owned by Victor How Chung Chan and Xu Han will make a onetime payment of US$8 million prior to gaining the controlling interests from Atlantic Hotel Inc (AHI) via NICIL.
For now, Grisi told Stabroek News, his focus is on preparing the hotel for its opening in February 2015. The opening of the hotel has missed soft opening dates including August and December of this year.
Grisi said fine tuning took the most amount of time and the hiring and training of staff to be adequately prepared with the technical and cultural systems of the Marriott brand would not be rushed. He told Stabroek News that once the financing, which he stated was not something he could comment on and directed this publication to NICIL, was worked out the system installation team would be arriving in January.
The Marriott General Manager noted that as of right now he could not say how many persons would be brought in to assist with training and how long those persons would be staying. He said that Marriott representatives responsible for training and overseeing how the hotel is being run could stay anywhere from three weeks to four months.
He emphasised that as a brand the Marriott would not be rushing training to open a hotel if the staff were not up to the task.
The current job fair saw up to 200 persons being interviewed. He said the response was to newspaper ads that have been posted and that hiring will be ongoing until the third week of December. The interviewing period has been extended, originally the process was to conclude in the last week of November.
The five-star rating of the hotel will rely heavily on the abilities of the staff. Previous president of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana Kit Nascimento told Stabroek News that he understood the potential challenge for the Marriott in hiring competent staff that will have the ability to provide five-star service.
He said “I doubt that the Marriott will do anything to undermine their international reputation… they will meet those requirements or they may not open until they do.” Nascimento said the Marriott project was “desirable” and definitely a necessity if Guyana wanted to move further into developing an extensive tourism sector.
He did concede that customer service has remained a consistent challenge in Guyana across various industries, but especially the service and tourism sectors. “It is an ongoing challenge. It is a challenge that we all have to meet,” he said in relation to training and hiring staff and transforming customer service across the board.
Grisi said that while he anticipated that “90% to 95%” of the new employees would be Guyanese nationals, the hotel’s management will be brought in. He explained that “when opening our first hotel in any new market, we generally provide an experienced Marriott leadership team to manage and launch the hotel.”
He added, “An experienced team trains the staff and the entry-level Guyanese supervisors to ensure they are educated on our highly regarded service standards.”
With the closure of the Hotel Tower on Main Street and the well-documented struggles with occupancy rates by various mid-level hoteliers in Guyana, the Marriott’s ability to sell a full hotel at the five-star level has been questioned. Two of Guyana’s hotels and resorts are up for sale; the Aracari Resort at Versailles, West Bank Demerara for US$5 million and the Prairie International Hotel, located at Coverden, East Bank Demerara for US$2 million. The owners of the two hotels up for sale stated that while no debt was attached to either of the properties there was little traffic.
When the Marriott is opened it is expected to provide 250 jobs for Guyanese.
