2 months ago, we told you about the rebranding effort that Princess Hotel in Belize City went through. It's now known as the Ramada Belize City Princess Hotel, going back the days when it was under the Ramada Hotel Group's management.
The move was done so that the Princess Hotel chain can join the Wyndham Hotel Chain, so as to tap into that international customer base.
As part of the process Princess has to get up to speed with the standards for Wyndham Hotels, meaning that their 160 rooms have to be renovated. Part of that process is replacing their old "big box" televisions with flatscreens.
They now have these 160 old school TV's for which they have no use, so what to do with it? Well, the management decided to donate to several charity organizations. The media was invited to a breakfast press briefing to announce the brand new second hand donation. We stopped in and spoke with the Hotel's manager. Here's what he told us:
Erol Olcan, General Manager, Ramada Belize City Princess
"Our Chairman, Mr. Surdi Oskan, has asked me to get in touch with organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Dororthy Menzies, Mount Olive Adventist Church, Sister Cecilia Home, the National For Hope Foundation and the mosque, Islamic community, and I did get in touch with you and then he asked me to donate those televisions to those establishments. That is the reason we are here. We are going to donate to you one hundred and sixty televisions. Each organizations, please tell me how many do you need, then if you send somebody here with a transportation and we can give it to you and you can take it."
Lily Bowman, Director General, Belize Red Cross
"The General Manager told us to use it the way we see fit, so of course we will be discussing it as a team but we have training needs in every one of our branches, so that is one way that we can use them. We also have needs to raise funds for our programs that are not normally funded through project funding…programs that we usually sustain through our regular fund raising, so it could be used like that, but we haven't really decided yet."
Among the charity organizations which will benefit from the TV donations includes the Belize Red Cross, Dorothy Menzies Childcare Center, Sister Cecelia Home, Mount Zion Methodist Church, National 4H Foundation and Salvation Army.
We asked to see the old rooms, but that request was denied.
