Hotel group chair proposes co-op and solar farm projects to boost revenue

Chairman of the Intimate Hotels of Barbados (IHB) Mahmood Patel wants that body to undergo a major transformation coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic to become more sustainable and profitable.

And he has suggested that members focus on creating additional revenue streams instead of focusing solely on tourism.

His suggestions for expansion projects included starting a cooperative and a solar farm which could bring in much needed revenue.

He revealed that while the Enterprise Growth Fund Limited (EGFL) had given the IHB money to go towards the startup of a cooperative it never got off the ground.

“The EGFL had given the IHB $2 million to set up a cooperative and I think somehow along the line we dropped the ball and we spent that money apparently in road trips and road shows and marketing but the DNA of the IHB should have been a co-op,” Patel maintained.

“I think it is a good moment 20 years later to relook the idea of working together as a cluster so that we can do things collectively.”

Speaking during the IHB’s Annual General Meeting this morning, Patel said valuable lessons should be learnt from the pandemic which has crippled the tourism industry.

“After a pandemic, how can we change Barbados or how can we change the IHB to become a more resilient organisation that we can be better prepared for the future. After cataclysmic events like pandemics sometimes it takes years before the effect of the pandemic is realized or mapped out and I think that we as the IHB should actually be proactive in the way that we look at this pandemic.

“One of the main things that I would like to say is that the future should be ‘Transformation is the Recovery’. Don’t wait to stem the bleeding, normalize and then look at recovery through transformation. Let’s use transformation right now to lead the recovery,” Patel stressed.

The chairman also pointed out that it was important for the organisation to change the way it viewed tourism.

He said small hotels could not afford to rely on tourism for their only source of income.

“How do we send a message to our people, our state, our country, in terms of the role that tourism should play. In the past, I think tourism saw itself more as an end and I would like to change that thinking to say that tourism should be the means to an end,” Patel said.

“So we should use tourism in Barbados to pull other sectors and create linkages with agriculture, with energy, with food security, with agro-processing. Tourism should be the vehicle to pull the other sectors along.

“The IHB could look towards the future… and engage in bold actions that when we come out of this epidemic we are way ahead, we are much more efficient, much more sustainable and we are much more resilient,” he added.

Patel said the EGFL was also willing to fund the solar farm.

“One of the things that we need to look at is energy security and the EGFL is willing to walk with us and actualize and implement a solar farm that belongs to the IHB. We can find land; the BADMC is already willing to give us three to five acres of land and funded through the EGFL, all of us as shareholders can work out the square foot space or usage of electricity plus some additional capacity…so the IHB can then earn money itself to move away from being dependent on state funding,” Patel said.