Hotel Privatization Results In An Affordable Bahamas
<B> Hotel Privatization Results In An Affordable Bahamas</B>
By Cheryl Rosen
<I>Nassau, The Bahamas</I> - Even as the Caribbean Hotel Association predicted flat growth, at best, for the local tourism industry, the recently privatized hotels of Nassau are reporting nearly full houses in this summer's off-season. As they finish up a billion dollar round of investments in their properties, Nassau hotels are courting the corporate market with a respectable product at an affordable price.
On Nassau's Cable Beach hotel strip, the upscale Sandals Royal Bahamian all-inclusive resort in November opened the 11,000-sq.-ft. Fred Kassner Conference Center--with a ballroom that can accommodate up to 500 attendees banquet style or break down into three meeting rooms and an executive board room--plus 210 new guest rooms and two new restaurants. The towering Nassau Marriott Resort & Crystal Palace Casino has refurbished all meeting space and guest rooms, and the Radisson Cable Beach Resort and the Nassau Beach Hotel also are being refurbished.
Offshore, the Atlantis hotel and casino has completed a $450 million expansion and doubled its number of guest rooms to 2,400.
On Cable Beach alone, the five properties that market themselves as The Great Resorts of Nassau offer a combined 80,000 square feet of indoor meeting space. The Marriott boasts a 10,000-sq.-ft. permanent Rainforest Theater that seats 750 attendees, while the Radisson offers a seven-acre outdoor waterscape and soundproof translation booths. Sandals has a nearby private island to which it can ferry corporate groups for themed parties.
Graycliffe, a diminuitive downtown upscale property with an $8 million wine cellar and its own cigar factory, is adding eight rooms and a two-bedroom suite, plus a spa, beauty salon and gym, in a $6 million renovation. Guests eating in the restaurant, which can handle 400 couverts a night, can watch Graycliffe cigars being rolled by hand before sampling one.
Meeting planners looking for other unique travel niceties may want to try the new catamaran service to Miami, which began in June. The five-hour ride costs $146 each way, and as island businesses accept American dollars, visitors are free from the hassles of currency exchange. Its this likeness to the states and Nassau's island environs that are catching the eyes of incentive groups.
For example, Humana Inc. this year brought a group of 400 incentive winners to the island. "We try to vary the locations we go to every year--we've been to Maui and Vancouver and Denver, and we've been to the Bahamas before, but this was our first time in Nassau," said meeting services coordinator Connie Nau. "It offered beaches, casinos, water sports--it really gave us the opportunity to do a lot of things, and the airfare was cost-effective because our group is mainly from the East Coast."
Though the hotel itself was wonderful and the destination management company, Destinations by Paragon, did "a great job," Nau did have two issues with the island: its relaxed sense of time, and the hassles she encountered with U.S. Customs, which for two months held the attendees' gifts and T-shirts being shipped home.
Regarding the former, she said, "as a meeting planner, I need things to be pretty timely, and their sense of timeliness and mine were quite different." For the latter, she counseled, "work with a really good customs broker."
Though, in the end, Nau said, "I'd take another group there. Everybody had a blast.