Hyatt must clear up TT cash concerns

Four days after the Hyatt Regency Hotel announced in a rescinded social media post that it was moving to establish a new payment system which included no longer accepting T&T currency, we have heard nothing more from the establishment about what its real intentions are.

The fallout from the initial post embarrassed Hyatt into replying a little later to say that the message was prematurely distributed with inaccurate information.

The hotel apologised, saying that at this time it would not be implementing any changes to its payment process.

The problem with Hyatt’s apology, though, was that it did not focus on the real concern, as the hotel placed more emphasis on correcting what the post said about cashless payment options, instead of dealing with the issues of what type of cash it would be accepting, which initially was only US currency and British pound sterling.

There is nothing uncommon with a hotel choosing to go cashless, as this has been the trend across the hospitality sector for the last decade.

In fact, policy statements of several Hyatt hotels in North America – including in Chicago, at the Lost Pines, Texas branch and at the Hyatt Park Hotel in Toronto, Canada – have dedicated sections explaining the brand’s no-cash policy to the public.

Hyatt is not the only brand, as right here in T&T the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre has also adopted a no-cash policy in some aspects of its operations.

Had the Hyatt Regency simply announced that its Port-of-Spain branch was going a similar route, it would have been in a good position to argue a case for the benefits of cashless transactions, including a reduced risk of criminal activity on its premises, an alignment with modern and futuristic trends, and faster processing of business transactions.

However, in its correction, Hyatt’s corporate communications team either completely missed the mark or deliberately chose to steer away from addressing the earlier egregious suggestion that the exchange of T&T notes and coins would be discontinued.

The fact that the Hyatt has, up to now, avoided a direct response to this is baffling, given that the Hyatt Regency was built with taxpayers’ money and is 100 per cent owned by the people of T&T through the landlord, the Urban Development Company of T&T (Udecott).

Udecott has a contractual agreement with the Hyatt International brand, which is managing the hotel.

While there are laws and practices in some countries that allow sellers to determine what type of currency they may choose to use, they do not apply here, where all genuine banknotes and coins issued by the Central Bank are legal tender.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert, as Corporation Sole, has rightly sought to investigate the circumstances behind the issuance of the initial statement.

Thankfully, unlike the Hyatt’s, Minister Imbert’s statement zeroed in on the real issue affecting citizens.

We eagerly await the Finance Minister’s findings and we also hope that the Hyatt management will give the people of T&T a deserving clarification on what in the initial post was inaccurate and what the hotel’s real intentions are on the issues of cash transactions and currency exchange.

To have citizens suspecting that their money, which was good enough to build the hotel, is now not good enough to be used there, is simply unacceptable.

The post Hyatt must clear up TT cash concerns first appeared on CNC3.