PAGO PAGO (Samoa News/PINA) — University of Hawaii Professor Nicholas Ordway is in American Samoa to come up with ideas for restoring and upgrading the once famous Rainmaker Hotel.
Ordway said his job is not to determine the monetary value of the hotel, but to find alternatives for rehabilitation and configuration of the hotel.
Ordway, who is on assignment for the university’s Pacific Business Center Program, said:
“In 1965, when Rainmaker Hotel was first built, it was one of the best hotels in the world. Rainmaker was the pride of the South Pacific. The main focus now is to try to find a way to enhance the old hotel and bring it back to its original splendor.”
Ordway said that his main goal is to “find what the hotel needs in the way of changes and modifications in order to attract more people and visitors.”
The professor will also be traveling to Samoa to look at competitive properties there and compare them with Rainmaker Hotel.
Ordway observes and studies hotels all over the world.
His visit comes less then three months after Gov. Tauese Sunia rejected a proposal from a joint-venture to purchase the 180-room hotel.
Rainmaker is about to face competition from a three-story Tradewinds West Hotel, which will be a Quality Inn franchise.
This 104-room “plantation style” hotel is owned and being developed by Ottoville Investment One, a local company owned by the Otto Haleck family.
