In 1953 JB Fernandes purchased both the Queen’s Park Hotel in Port of Spain and the Great House of the Champs-Élysées Estate in Maraval from Huggins and Company who acquired both in 1932. The Great House, operating as the Trinidad Country Club would be a source of ongoing controversy because of restrictive policies that limited membership to people from the United Kingdom.

Issues surrounding these policies would become a cause célèbre of the 1970s Black Power Movement.

The Queen’s Park Hotel is well known among the wider rum cocktail community for the eponymous swizzle drink that was created there. The Queen’s Park Swizzle can be traced to the 1920s and was described by Tiki cocktail pioneer Trader Vic as “the most delightful form of anesthesia given out today”.

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