Uruguay seeks solution for Hotel Casino Carmelo
Uruguay's Ministry of Tourism has reopened the debate on the future of the Hotel Casino Carmelo after successive calls for tenders failed to attract interest from the private hotel sector. Minister Pablo Menoni was emphatic: the ministry is working to find a definitive solution for the property, although he acknowledged that the path would not be easy.
"There is a lack of demand for what was included in the previous administration's tender specifications. A hotel for a hotel alone, with the demand we have, we understand, and the force of events has shown us, that there is no interest," Menoni stated. The minister left open the possibility of combining the hotel project with other alternatives to make it more attractive to private investors.
The management of the process falls to the National Directorate of Tourism, led by Cristian Pos, who had previously anticipated that the ongoing negotiation might result in a negative response and that a less demanding tender would be pursued. Pos also confirmed that the Ministry has prepared a "no-conditions" sale tender for the property as a last resort alternative, should direct negotiation with a private investor not succeed.
The property's history has accumulated criticism. The mayor of Carmelo, Luis Parodi, was one of the harshest in evaluating previous processes: "I believe the tender that was issued had too many expectations, when it should have been a bit more grounded in reality." Parodi himself also admitted that the place was left "totally neglected," which worsened the deterioration of the heritage and further complicated the search for investors.
For the regional market, the case of Hotel Casino Carmelo illustrates the challenges faced by Latin American governments when trying to activate tourism assets with a gaming component in smaller-scale destinations. The combination of aging infrastructure, uncompetitive tender specifications, and low hotel demand in secondary destinations is a recurring pattern in several countries in the region, where casino operators prefer to concentrate their investments in higher-volume urban markets.
Tags: Uruguay, Hotel Casino Carmelo, tender process, tourism, casino