Trinidad has never been a tourist haven. Even in the 19th century, all that attracted visitors here was the Pitch Lake. Port-of-Spain, however, was a crossroads of commerce and thus business travellers flocked to its confines.
This gave rise to a need for decent short-term accommodation. Much of this demand came from within the colony itself, since the very bad roads ensured that a trip from the countryside into the city could take several days in the return.
Even though there was a steamship communication between San Fernando and Port-of-Spain from 1818 (extended to the other coastal towns by the time the service ended 110 years later), people were required to overnight in the capital. There were several decent boarding houses where a meal and bed could be had. These were often run by white or coloured women of diminished means who supported themselves by renting rooms in their spacious homes.
By the middle of the 19th century, purpose-built hotels were coming into being though of varying standards. Stark’s guide book of 1897 noted:
“There are some very respectable boarding-houses, where a lady or gentleman may obtain lower rates, but of course the style of living and the surroundings are more homely. Most of the best hotels have the telephone attached, are furnished with excellent baths, and all conveniences and comforts which tend to make life easy.”
There was for instance the Ice House Hotel, operating above the famous Ice House which began business in 1844 and survived in various guises such as the Hotel McKinney and Family Hotel well into the 1940s.
Then there was the La India Hotel on St Vincent Street which catered mainly for gentlemen but was little more than a glorified brothel.
Of a better class was the Hotel de Paris. When it was founded in 1870 by Louis Guiseppi, the Hotel de Paris on Abercrombie Street was the finest of the sort in the island. It boasted 34 rooms opening onto an upper floor, a posh dining room, and an extensive drawing room where the upper classes would meet and share a cocktail over the latest gossip. To the back of the hotel was a garden and patio which was an oddity for an establishment in the heart of the city. The hotel as a resort was unknown until the opening of the Queen's Park Hotel in 1895. Nevertheless, the Hotel de Paris existed well into the 1930s by which time it had lost much of its sheen and had decayed into little more than a cheap dive. Indeed, one guest in 1922 remarked that the rooms had saloon swinging doors rather than proper panelled ones so that one could lie in bed and see the heads and feet of all the people trudging the corridors.
The Hotel de France on St Vincent Street was located about the same place where the present-day Guardian Media building stands. It was one of the best hostelries of the era as confirmed in this description by Lady Brassey in 1883:
“The Hotel de France, where those of our party who had remained ashore after we left them last night had dined comfortably, maintained its reputation to-day. We had an excellent breakfast, good wine, and plenty of ice and fruit, served in a nice cool room by the most civil and obliging of negro waiters. The proprietress married many years ago a French coiffeur, who, being unable to exist away from his beloved boulevards, returned in due course to Paris, leaving Madame, who could not tear herself from her daughter, to attend to the business. The daughter is married to a French Creole, who does not appear to do much more than lounge about and smoke all day, while the wife looks after a sweet little white-faced baby, that looks as delicate and fragile as a lily.
Madame devotes herself to the management of the house, cellar, and table department; while her sister cooks dainty dishes, fit to set before a king. The result of their combined efforts and good management is that a comfortable hotel is provided for the benefit of all travellers to Puerto d'Espana, where formerly none existed, and where chance visitors were entirely dependent upon the sometimes severely-taxed hospitality of the residents.”
The survival of a menu from this fine establishment gives testament to the prowess of its kitchen staff. On lower Henry Street, opposite the railway station, was Joaquim Ribiero’s Standard Hotel that had perhaps the best bar in the country. This as always is the measure of a fine hotel for most locals.