Ireland-born Shaun McGrath, 61, came to Guyana in 1989 on a two-year contract with the former owner of the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown. He has since co-founded the Cara Hotels group, a small chain of heritage hotels in Guyana and the Caribbean, and has made an indelible mark in the local hospitality and tourism sectors as a hotelier, restaurateur and tour operator.
“Two years became four years, four years became five years and then (co-founder of Cara Hotels and retired hotelier) Paul Stephenson and I were supposed to be transferred from Guyana and we decided we were going to quit at Forte, so we set up the Cara Hotels in Guyana,” McGrath told Stabroek Weekend.
“I fell in love with Guyana. I fell in love with a Guyanese woman, got married and the rest in history. My contract with Guyana is now 33 years and counting.”
Noting he has lived in Guyana longer than elsewhere, he said, “I came to this country as an Irishman who grew up on potatoes and I was living on yam fries initially. I didn’t see a potato until about 1991. Many things were sold on the black market. You couldn’t get US dollars. It has been fun watching Guyana develop and I like to think I’ve played a small part in its development through the hospitality and tourism industries. Though my mother and sisters still live in Ireland, I am blessed to have two home countries. Whenever I am in Guyana and I’m going to Ireland, I say I’m going home. When I’m in Ireland and I say I’m going to Guyana, I say I’m going home. I love both of them.
Of tourism, he said, “Tourism is my love and anything I can do to help to develop that sector is important to me because it develops and creates jobs, and it helps the country’s image.”
McGrath and Stephenson found that setting up the Cara Hotels had many challenges. Stephenson, also Irish, was a former chief executive officer of the Guyana Pegasus in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
“We opened the first hotel, Cara Suites, with 15 rooms in Middle Street, Georgetown in 1995. It was a bit of smoke and mirrors. We had no bar, no restaurant. We cheated the system. Back in those days there were no hotels of quality in Guyana. We did breakfast and introduced what was a ‘dine and sign’ with several restaurants in the city where the guests dined and their bills were charged to the rooms at Cara Suites. We had pizza and Chinese food deliveries, something that had never been done in hotels in Guyana before. It worked very well.” Cara Hotels gave up the management of Cara Suites about a decade ago.
When Stephenson and McGrath ventured out on their own in 1995, the Guyana economy was opening up with Omai Gold Mines in production and the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph company had taken over the telecommunications corporation and the services had improved.
In 1996 Cara Hotels opened Cara Lodge with 14 rooms. It now boasts 34 rooms.
“We had elections issues where visitors were encouraged not to come to Guyana. So it has been peaks and troughs to keep us to keep us going. About 25 per cent of our staff, with whom we opened Cara Lodge, has been with us from the start. Last year we inducted eight more people to our 20 year awards ceremony. Staff turnover is very low which I am proud of because it says a lot about you as an employer and the company.”
It has been checkered for us especially in the last three years obviously because of Covid-19. We are planning a further expansion of the property as the revenue from the oil and gas kicks in.”
Cara Lodge was a quarantine centre for ExxonMobil from early April 2020.
“There were no protocols in existence even at ExxonMobil. We had to develop protocols for check in, check out and servicing of rooms. We created a manual of Covid-19 protocols and that same manual was taken to the Marriott Hotel here and applied to other hotels. Within the first six months of Covid-19, we were the quarantine centre for ExxonMobil. Exxon then moved their centre to a bigger property in November 2020, which in many ways worked for us because Guyana opened its airport in October 2020 and there were small numbers of traffic. We kept our staff on board. We transported them to and from work to keep them as safely as possible.”
Cara Lodge also offers training to its staff and work study programmes for students from the Carnegie School of Home Economics. “Guyana has been good to us and the company and we try to give back as much as we can. Part of the problem in Guyana is that staff do not have exposure working overseas. That is a challenge in terms of the way the industry is going. It is an issue we are addressing.”
Cara Lodge has won several awards, including for best accommodation and best restaurant at the annual Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) awards. McGrath was inducted into the Tourism Hall of Fame for services to the development of tourism in Guyana.
Inherited trait
McGrath, now a naturalized Guyanese, is one of five siblings. His mother and grandmother were caterers, a trait he inherited. “I love to take local ingredients and play with them. In many ways I am actively involved in the menu creation at Cara Lodge which has developed a good name for food over the years. We’ve played quite successfully with local ingredients and put an international spin on them. I love entertaining at home. It relaxes my brain after the office.
I don’t cook a lot of Irish food. My son tells me I cook Irish curry and not Guyanese curry because I cook more of the Indian style curry using coconut milk. His mother cooks Guyanese curry. I like to make my own naan bread. My wife makes the roti.”
At 17 years McGrath gained entry to the Dublin Hospitality School of Management where he obtained a higher diploma in catering and shortly after a bachelor of science in management from Trinity College, Dublin.
He spent a couple of years in Ireland and then worked at the Isle of Wight, Yorkshire and the Fake District for Trusthouse Forte for five years. He left the UK to work at Holiday Inn at the invitation of the owner of the hotel in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (TT). “It wasn’t a good move for me. I was there for five months. After giving notice I then went to work for Trusthouse, former owners of the Pegasus in Guyana after Paul Stephenson who had gone to Guyana in 1986 offered me a job.”
The two had worked together for a brief period in the UK and Stephenson knew McGrath was going to TT.
“I went to Guyana to the surprise of many people at Trusthouse. Seven people had come to Guyana as part of an orientation process and they all went back and said there was no way they were going to work here. They were surprised when I took up work in Guyana. I hadn’t gone for a site visit before.”
Relating “a true but weird story,” McGrath said, “In 1986 when I was working in the UK, Paul and I went to a fortune teller one night. Paul went in before me and he was ashen faced when he came out. When I went in this lady told me, ‘I just told your friend he is going to work overseas and he is never coming back. In my mind, I said, ‘Oh God, this is bulls..t.’ Then she said to me, ‘And you’re going with him but not at the same time, sometime down the road.’ I said, ‘This woman is off her head.’ We were driving back at the hotel and Paul asked me, ‘What did she tell you? I told him what she said. He then said he was offered a job in Guyana that very day and he was going. I always said it was in the stars or something.” Stephenson has, however, returned to the UK, where he now resides.
Son John
McGrath is married with one child, John, who is in Barbados on a ten-week internship with Oceana Hotels. John has been accepted into EHL Hospitality Business and Management School in Switzerland and is starting classes in February 2023. EHL is consistently ranked the best hospitality management school globally.
According to McGrath, John is excited about his upcoming sojourn in Switzerland and subsequently his return to Guyana “to take over” the management of the family business.
John, a third dan black belt karateka, never stopped training throughout his school life in primary and secondary school. He secured a place at Queen’s College after writing common entrance and topped the world in the 2021 Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary in English Language while a student at School of the Nations. He scored 99 out of 100 among one million students from 136 countries who wrote the exams.
John, now 18 years, gained his black belt (first dan) at eight years, his second dan at ten years and his third dan at 12, becoming one of the youngest third dans in the world. Fourth dans are not awarded until the age of 21.
Because of John, McGrath became involved in corporate governance, fundraising and the development of the Karate College in the country. In 2010 he became the president of the college, a position he held for five years.
“I am delighted to say the new dojo at Liliendaal is going to be opened in March 2023. Even though I’m no longer involved in the college’s administration, I’ve been involved on the periphery in an advisory capacity and helping with fundraising. During my term as an executive we brought some international tournaments to Guyana, including the South American Cup. We took Guyanese teams to Barbados, TT and Canada, where our children won medals and trophies. Our next tournament is going to be in Guyana 2023.” The senior McGrath was inducted into the Karate Hall of Fame for service to karate.
THAG
McGrath served as president of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana in 1998 and again in 2014. “In my first two-year tenure we published the first edition of Explore Guyana magazine and it is still in publication today. In 2016 I started Guyana Restaurant Week with 12 restaurants. I had a lot of convincing to do that this was going to work. It is now offered twice a year. The last edition before Covid-19 struck we had 30 odd restaurants on board. I’m very proud of what Guyana Restaurant Week has achieved over the last six years. It has forced a lot of restaurants to up the bar in terms of quality and creativity for catering and dining.”
McGrath has always been involved in THAG in one way or another, either on the executive committee or on the marketing and finance committees.
He has advocated and made recommendations for tourism over the years with government officials as part of delegations for the development of the sector. He was a member of the Guyana Tourism Authority board of directors on two occasions. He is also involved with the tour company Wilderness Explorers, which promotes tours in Guyana.
“I have a finger in many pies from the hotel side of it, the resort side of it, the tour operator side of it. That is what I love doing.”
Cara Quiz night
The midweek trivia game started off in 2004 at the first bar opened at Cara Suites in Middle Street in an attempt to bring patrons on a Wednesday night. It was supposed to be for six weeks but it did not stop and continued until December 2021.
“We raised over $24 million for local charities over the years. For the first few years it was done purely for fun. Then we saw an opportunity to raise some money for charity and we played for a different charity every month. We tried playing online for a while during the pandemic but it was not the same. It was interesting that when we were playing online people joined us from around the world. People from the US and the Caribbean played on a regular basis.”
McGrath is receiving emails and calls on a regular basis to restart. Even if there is no game before the year ends, he said, one will be held during the Christmas season.
He recalled, “Some played from the very first day we started. Some came to Guyana for two, three years, played and left. Some came, made new friends at the quiz and some even got married.”
