By Denise Maycock

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

Royal Caribbean will invest around $50m to develop its Royal Beach Club project on Paradise Island, its chief executive has revealed, having set a late 2022 target date for its opening.

Michael Bayley, who is also the cruise line’s president, told Tribune Business while in Grand Bahama on Monday that all employees who work there will be Bahamian although he gave no figure for the number of likely hires.

“We are still working through all of the details of the Royal Beach Club, and the investment will be at a minimum at $50m, and that’s not including the cost of acquiring the land. So, it is a fairly significant project,” he said.

Royal Caribbean is understood to have spent around $54m on acquiring a series of residential properties at the western end of Paradise Island. Tribune Business exclusively revealed earlier this week that the cruise line has submitted an application to lease around 10 acres of Crown Land in the Colonial Beach area, which it will combine with its private acquisitions to form the Beach Club.

Mr Bayley voiced optimism that the Royal Beach Club will be a top-class addition to Nassau’s tourism sector, offering visitors a “Bahamian beach club” experience. He added that all the employees who will work there will be Bahamians.

“It is a beach club experience, and people want to have a Bahamian beach club experience,” he said. When asked about the amenities that will be offered, Mr Bayley said Royal Caribbean was not quite ready to talk about that aspect, but plans to reveal images, concepts and descriptions of the experience they are going to create in the coming months.

“We expect it to be up and running by hopefully late 2022,” Mr Bayley said of the Paradise Island project. “We acquired land over a period of a few years actually on Paradise Island, and we have been working on this concept for quite some time – the Royal Beach Club on Paradise Island.

“We think it is going to be yet again another wonderful attribute to tourism in Nassau. It is going to allow Royal Caribbean to increase the number of ships that we bring to Nassau and The Bahamas, even more than we do today.

“I think now in 2019 we are the number one cruise company bringing tourists to The Bahamas. We think it is part of the ongoing development of attractions and destination experiences that really are critical if you want to be a world-class vacation company. And so we are very excited about this opportunity.”

Mr Bayley added that Royal Caribbean is in talks with various stakeholders to ensure the project is successful and welcomed by all.

“We are in discussions with all types of different communities and groups because, again, we want the Beach Club to be a win-win,” he said. “It will be a win for the local community, it will be a win for the folks who are engaged in the Lighthouse Project. And that is our intention to find a way so that everybody leaves the table and is involved in something that is regarded as successful.”

Mr Bayley’s comments came as after Tribune Business reported complaints earlier this week by Toby Smith, the Bahamian principal of Paradise Island Lighthouse & Beach Club Company, that the government was pressuring him to accept an “inferior” crown land parcel to the one contained in a lease agreement issued to him just two months ago so that Royal Caribbean’s desires can be accommodated. The Royal Caribbean chief’s remarks, though, indicate that the cruise line may be amenable to a better compromise solution with him.

However, Royal Caribbean’s plans and the government’s actions raise multiple questions that have yet to be answered. Not least is the fact that the private properties that the cruise line has acquired are all residential, meaning that the area would have to be re-zoned for commercial use under planning laws. It is unlikely Royal Caribbean would have proceeded without assurances this would happen.

Carl Bethel QC, the attorney general, also told this newspaper yesterday that allowing Royal Caribbean to have its own private Paradise Island destination is required to improve the cruise visitor experience in Nassau, and effectively represents a trade-off for the increased port and tourist fees that will finance Prince George Wharf’s $250m upgrade by Global Ports Holding.

However, this appears to directly contradict the strategy and rationale for embarking on the Nassau cruise port upgrade in the first place. It was billed as the catalyst for kick-starting the much-talked-about revival of Bay Street and the downtown Nassau area, improving the port’s competitiveness, enticing more passengers off the ships and improving visitor spending yields with local businesses.

This could all be undermined if Royal Caribbean automatically directs, and takes, all its passengers to a destination that it controls on Paradise Island. Apart from uncertainty over whether Bahamians would have access, the cruise lines typically dictate marks-ups, margins and pricing to any locally-owned businesses that operate in their private locations.

Royal Caribbean’s interest in having its own private destination in Nassau is thought to have been sparked by the success Atlantis has enjoyed in attracting cruise passengers to its water park on day passes. It now wants to retain all this income, and appears likely to end up competing directly with Bay Street and Bahamian-owned businesses to achieve this.

Bay Street and downtown Nassau businesses have already reacted with fury to Royal Caribbean’s plans. Leon Griffin, Treasure Bahamas general manager, queried “how will Bay Street businesses survive” if Royal Caribbean’s ambitions are realised. He said: “We depend solely on the cruise passengers and those who are residing in the hotels who come downtown to purchase.

“But if they have their own spot, like how they have got the different cays, and when you go on the different cays nobody else benefits except themselves [the cruise lines], how could the Government of The Bahamas allow such a thing to happen?”

“It’s terrible. It’s going to affect the whole of Bay Street whether we like it or not, and this government needs to rethink what they are doing because they are not thinking for the people. I’m p----- off about it to be honest with you.

“When I heard about it I didn’t understand what they were doing, but now I realise. How could the government do something like that? They continue to give away the people’s properties, and yet when Bahamians apply for crown land it’s a hell to get through with.”