Q & A with Enrique de Marchena Kaluche, President-Elect of the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA)

Dominican businessman and lawyer Enrique de Marchena Kaluche has just been voted for as president-elect of CHA. The votes were cast during the annual Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference that came to an end Tuesday in Miami, Florida. Mr. Marchena will now start a 12-month preparation process before taking over a CHA President to serve a two-year term.

As we speak, Mr. Marchena is CHA’s fifth raking deputy president and served his tenure as regional vice president to represent the Dominican Republic before the organization’s executive committee.

Q.- What do you make of your election as CHA’s new President?
A.- I’m already involved in my new position as president-elect of the organization. Tradition goes the new president-elect must go through a one-year preparation before taking over during the following year’s annual assembly.

Indeed, it’s been 45 years since this organization (CHA) was founded and it now gathers 35 different hotel associations from the Caribbean region. The task ahead of me is huge, let alone the extraordinary amount of documents and information that it generates. That’s why this preparation period is so necessary and important.

I served a two-year tenure as regional vice president and then spent a couple of years as CHA’s fifth ranking deputy president. Now I’m formally into the presidency. Anyway, I’m totally involved in all tasks related to the organization’s presidency.

Q.- When Simon Suarez took over as CHA President he told me he was going to do everything within his power to make the Spanish language of the most spoken or translated-into tongues in CHA. But he failed to do that. Do you hope to accomplish that goal in your presidency?
A.- I’ve got a couple of main goals in mind and that’s precisely one of them, not only as far as the Spanish-speaking people are concerned, but also as far as French-speaking people are concerned. I believe the only way to further integrate them and make part of this organization in a hands-on fashion is by providing simultaneous translation in conferences and posting information on our website in those languages spoken in the region.

The second goal I have in the crosshairs is the achievement of a far more active integration of Spanish hotel companies with investments in the Caribbean. During my term at the helm of the Dominican Republic’s National Hotel & Restaurant Association (ASONAHORES) in Santo Domingo, that kind of effort got a big boost. During my two-year term I attended six to eight different meetings with reps from big-time Spanish hotel chains.

Q.- May we then say that CHA is going to attend next year’s FITUR with a booth of its own?
A.- Maybe not next year, but next year is more likely we’re going to see that happen. By that time, I’m going to be at the helm of CHA.

Q.- Do you think the lack of communication between CHA and CTO on the one hand and Spanish investors on the other has sort of held back the latter to make a full-fledged entry into the Caribbean region?
A.- The fact of the matter is there hasn’t been real integration between the English-speaking Caribbean and the rest of the Caribbean (Spanish- and French-speaking). What I’m trying to say is CHA is mostly an institution made up of English-speaking countries from the Caribbean.

When you take a look at the Dominican Republic with 63,000 guestrooms under its belt, a figure that stands for more than the rest of the Caribbean combined –with the exception of Cuba and Mexico’s Caribbean- when you’ve got a leading country like that in an organization there’s no way you can turn your back on it. Furthermore, the total amount of Spanish investment in that country is right now in the neighborhood of 75 to 80 percent of all hotel rooms. That massive entry of Spanish investors in the country is certainly making people turn their heads and look at the Spanish-speaking Caribbean more closely.

On the other hand, those same Spanish hotel chains have reached out to other nations like Jamaica and Aruba, and they’re going to keep coming in. Therefore, the election of a Spanish-speaking person to lead CHA is a recognition that this organization is calling for an overhaul. I even said these same remarks during my acceptance speech and I got a standing ovation. And you can rest assured my swearing-in speech in going to be both in English and Spanish.