The Caribbean Innkeeper - Small Hotel Resource Information Centre

“Market Readiness” clearly implies that a property’s facilities, amenities and services are at a consistent quality level to adequately meet target market expectations. This combined with proper and effective market positioning are critical tools for the generation of acceptable financial results and overall performance.

It was with this tenet in mind, to ascertain market readiness, that the OAS undertook an extensive assignment in 2006 to evaluate the market readiness of a number of small hotel properties throughout the region, relative to the Entry Listing Requirements of the OAS developed Brands and Standards.

A major objective of these reviews was also to be able to recommend to the CHA and CTO which of those properties should be included in the new “Caribbean” web site being developed by these agencies. This is anticipated as becoming the definitive site for Caribbean tourism product and services’ marketing, including small hotels and the OAS Entry Listing Requirements, a threshold for inclusion eligibility.

Properties in twelve OAS participating countries were evaluated: Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, Guyana, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, The Bahamas, Jamaica and Belize.

Individual country Ministries of Tourism or equivalent agency, selected the properties to be inspected, with a principal requirement that each was close to or already at “market readiness” condition. In total, approximately 132 properties were evaluated.

The evaluation process comprised three tasks:

A site visit
A confidential interview with the owner/manager or his/her designated representative
Completion of the “Site Check List”
Completion of the “Entry Listing Requirement” check list
Completion of the property “Self-Assessment/Evaluation” matrix
Digital photo-taking
Completion of a “Deficiency/Improvements” table, and
Allocation of a preliminary brand (from the caribbeanexperiences^TM range) and rating (using the caribbeanexperiences^TM symbol).

Final reports have now been sent to the OAS and individual properties are now being contacted with the results of the visit to their (individual) property.

Principal findings of the evaluation assignment may be accessed below:

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