The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Atlantis has enjoyed a “very strong” August with room rates up 9 per cent year-over-year, its top executive adding that the resort was currently on-pace to finish 2014 “ahead” of last year.

George Markantonis, Brookfield Hospitality’s president and managing director, told Tribune Business that while the Paradise Island landmark continued to perform well even though it might not match initial forecasts for the 2014 full year.

“We’re having a very strong August,” he said. “The summer has definitely met expectations, no doubt about that... We’re doing some aggressive promotions and we’ll see what comes of that.

“August has been very strong in comparison to August last year. It is showing an increase, a very small increase in occupancy, year-over-year, and a much higher rate - about a 9 per cent increase.

“August traditionally runs very high occupancies anyway, so you have to yield up.”

Mr Markantonis told Tribune Business that the August outcome will depend on the upcoming US Labour Day holiday weekend, which traditionally generates high occupancies and extensive casino spend.

“I think August will finish in a very strong fashion,” he added. “We will finish the year ahead of last year; maybe not quite where we had hoped to be, but it’s too early to say.”

A Standard & Poor’s (S&P) report on Atlantis, released earlier this month, noted that Atlantis’s revenue per available room (RevPAR) , a key indicator of hotel performance, had “improved slightly by 1.1 per cent” year-over-year for the five months to May 2014.

The report, produced to assess the creditworthiness of the $1 billion in mortgage-backed securities issued as part of the resort’s refinancing, said Atlantis’s RevPAR fell by 6.5 per cent in 2013.

The resort and its immediate owner, Brookfield Real Estate Fund, attributed this to “less group business and more complimentary and discounted guestrooms to casino guests” in an effort to reverse recent declines in annual casino revenues.

Atlantis’s RevPAR performance, though, had traditionally been better than the rest of the Caribbean and Orlando hotel markets, although below that of south Florida.

Mr Markantonis, meanwhile, told Tribune Business that Atlantis’s 2016 group bookings were “up in excellent fashion” compared to 2014 levels. And next year’s bookings in this category were also “up a little bit” on this year.

Distinguishing between ‘definite’ group bookings, who have signed contracts with Atlantis, and ‘tentatives’, who have committed but are yet to actually sign, Mr Markantonis said 2015 contained a number of the latter.

“These two [categories] together show we will have a strong 2016 in the group field, and a good 2015,” he told Tribune Business.

Atlantis is now preparing for the traditionally slowest period in its annual business cycle, the September-October months, with the “next big business time” the Thanksgiving weekend and ‘Battle 4 Atlantis’ US college basketball tournament.

Mr Markantonis added that Atlantis was already planning for 2015, and “still working” on capital expenditure/investment plans that remain “under review”.

S&P, in its report, said: “The borrower [Brookfield’s 10 special purpose vehicles] plans to spend about $21.2 million in 2014, including $6 million to refurbish the Marketplace restaurant and $4.2 million to renovate 300 rooms in the Cove Tower.

“These amounts are less than 4 per cent of total revenue and will be funded from the annual furniture, fixtures, and equipment reserve.”