-with today’s sod-turning ceremony
GUYANA is one step closer to boasting a Marriott-branded hotel with the sod-turning ceremony planned for later today at the proposed Kingston, Georgetown site.
Marriott International Inc. announced last year that it intended to open its first Marriott-branded hotel here in 2013.
After an earlier delay since the announcement, due mainly to financing, Atlantic Hotel Inc (AHI) disclosed on Friday that it was ready to move ahead with the massive investment.
This comes weeks after outgoing President Bharrat Jagdeo announced that the project was still in the pipeline.
The 160-room Georgetown Marriott Hotel is on track to receive LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and is on track to becoming Marriott’s first LEED hotel in the Caribbean & Latin America. 
It will operate under a management agreement with AHI, currently owned by the Government of Guyana (GoG) as part of a public-private partnership between the Administration and private sector investors.
Tourism Minister Manniram Prashad says Guyana welcomes this venture wholeheartedly, adding that it translates into added accommodation of an international standard.  “We are having a Marriott brand; this will be sold internationally… and with a casino, it will be even better,” an enthused Prashad told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday.
He said that with more and more tourists becoming attracted to this country, a facility of this magnitude will surely fill the void the demand has created. “All the hotels are filled now in Guyana; filled to capacity. The resorts in the interior locations for bird watching are filled until June next year,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, he has revealed that discussions are ongoing with several other investors interested in the hotel industry. While the minister refused to go into detail on the projects, he said one of the hotels would be located on Main Street, another next to the Chinese Embassy opposite the Botanical Gardens and a third at Liliendaal near the Guyana International Conference Centre.
Marriott International, Inc. has nearly 500 locations in 60 countries around the world.