New York-born Ernest Littles, 59, CEO of CrewsInn group and president of the Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association.

Photo: Andre Alexander

BY SANDRA CHOUTHI

From the fire-hot World Trade Center in New York to laid back Crews Inn in Chaguaramas, New York-born Ernest Littles, 59, wears two hats which are ideally entwined: that of CEO of the Joseph Elias-owned CrewsInn group—restaurants, the 46-room hotel, 68-slip marina and boatyard—and president of the Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association.

It’s all about hospitality, a subject Littles knows a lot about.

He has spent more than 30 years in this industry. He was general manager of business development and marketing of JFK, La Guardia and Newark airports.

He was also general manager responsible for the business development and marketing of the World Trade Center and owners’ representative for the Vista Hotel and Windows of the World Restaurant.

Eighteen months ago, Littles traded in a metropolitan life for a tropical one.

He, his Arima-bred wife Lorraine Jennings-Littles, and their 13-year-old fraternal twin sons, Charles and James, moved from their upscale life at Forest Hills Garden, Queens, New York, for the golf-playing community of Moka, Maraval.

The couple met in London where Littles was promoting Newark airport in New York as an international airport.

“She caught my attention and the rest is our personal history,” said the six-foot tall Littles, looking out his office window to dozens of white yachts moored at the marina.

Lorraine is a sales and marketing consultant who specialises in luxury goods.

“Right now, her primary customers are Cartier and the Ven Dome Group, which Cartier is a part of,” said clean-shaven Littles, whose only pieces of jewelry were a silver watch and a gold wedding band set against a pale blue striped shirt. He propped up his chin with his right hand, displaying slender, manicured fingers.

As an aside, Littles mentioned a fellow running a record store in London who wanted to meet with Littles and his people because he wanted to buy an airplane. His name? Richard Branson. Think Virgin Airlines.

Long before Littles made Trinidad his home, he was involved with the World Trade Center “when it was being built, when it was a hole in the ground” back in 1966.

Over the next 30 years, he’d hold several jobs connected with the World Trade Center.

As construction auditor, he “looked at all the contracts, making sure they (contractors) weren’t padding the cables and doing what they should have done. As business analyst, he was involved in setting up the World Trade Institute.

The institute dealt with aspects of world trade: education—brokerage licences, freight forwarding, financial documents, letters of exchange, etc.

He was also the analyst for setting up the World Trade Information Center.

Littles left the World Trade Center around 1980 to be part of the deregulation of the airline industry through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center.

His job as internal consultant to the executive director was to create efficiencies, which meant making money.

“They’d send me to Zurich, London, Tokyo, places where they had offices, to create efficiency and make net profits,” Littles said.

Littles returned to the World Trade Center in the 1980s after the real estate market took a dive: the towers only had 65 per cent occupancy.

“There was US$1 billion invested through debt which wasn’t making the income it was supposed to,” Littles said.

When he left, it had 96 per cent occupancy.

It deeply troubles Littles that many of the tenants he’d solicited to the World Trade Center when he was general manger of business development and marketing died on September 11, 2001. Among them was his chief of security, Doug Karpiloff.

Eighteen months before that fateful day, though, the Dance Theatre of Harlem had asked Littles to be its interim CEO, which he agreed to be for one year.

The theatre was scheduled to perform in the five-acre World Trade Center Plaza between the twin towers on September 11, a Friday.

“I had an appointment with some former colleagues on Tuesday, which I rescheduled to Friday,” Littles recalled, his brow creasing at the memory.

“Friday never came for the World Trade Center. It still makes me feel very sad. It put a hole in my psyche.”

Those memories make him want to spend more quality time with his wife and sons, to live life to the fullest.

September 11 also recalls for Littles the February 26, 1993, bombing of the basement of the World Trade Center, which killed six and injured about 1,000.

“The people killed all worked for me,” Littles said, one of whom was a woman seven months pregnant. “We worked heroically to get the World Trade Center back and reopened in ten weeks.”

Littles keeps those horrific memories to himself.

There’s the private Littles and the humble one.

He dismissed reports that he has deep pockets, smiling and saying, “I need to work. I have two sons to send to school.”

As a resident in a golf-playing community, Littles said he played the sport as a young fellow when he lived in Panama, where his stepfather, Robert Doucet, served as a jungle warfare training specialist. He resumed playing a round of golf in early January but his back gave out.

Littles said his mother, Thelma, originally from South Carolina, is a “good-looking woman.”

His father, Ernest Snr, and stepfather were career soldiers and were both sergeant majors. Ernest Snr did three tours of duty in Korea in World War II. Doucet escorted Ernest Snr’s body back home. Littles was only five years old.

Littles also lived in Germany and Italy through his stepfather’s work in transportation.

Of his father, Littles said jokingly, “He looked a lot like me. He was a very charismatic person, a man’s man and a natural leader.”

His father instilled in him self-reliance, integrity and honour; and his stepfather, discipline and commitment to others other than oneself.

Looking to expand

CrewsInn Hotel and Yachting Centre in Chaguaramas plans to extend the dock by 100 metres, said group CEO Ernest Littles.

The extension is to allow the marina to more accommodate mediterranean-style yachts—vessels of 100 feet long and more.

Littles said there exists a “big opportunity to grow the boatyard business,” at the Chaguaramas facility, which he said boasts of a covered boat repair facility like no other in the Caribbean.

The Yachting Centre has a 220-tonne lift that can take out “mega yachts,” which have crews of ten and more.

“They generally have higher propensity to spend than the smaller yachts,” Littles said. “The owners are not watching their pennies unlike the smaller ones. The larger yacht owners are looking for the quality of the experience.”

“Any work you do on them is worth a minimum, an average, of $.5 million,” Littles said.

He said those kinds of jobs have implications for small contractors—welders, carpenters, joiners, etc, to get on-the-job training.

Regarding his role as president of the Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association, Littles said a team of its members will be going on a four-day Caribbean road show in May to Barbados, St Lucia and St Vincent to market Trinidad as a shopping and events destination.