The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

WITH the future of Baha Mar clouded in uncertainty, businesses that hoped to benefit from the project’s expected economic boost are starting to feel the pinch.

For Sandy Toes, a small company that provides people with trips and activities to Rose Island, this has meant dealing with business cancellations worth more than $50,000.

“Baha Mar is important to us because they bring tourists to our destination,” Iola Knowles, an event manager at Sandy Toes, told The Tribune yesterday.

“Tourists are our main customers and the main source of our revenue and business livelihood. Furthermore, we also work with many destination management companies (DMC) based in Nassau that handle large incentive groups that visit the Bahamas for meetings under the groups/incentives category.

“These groups bring business not only to the hotels, but to businesses off-property such as day away excursions – the kind that our business benefits from. With Baha Mar positioning itself as a draw for large groups because of their meeting and convention facilities, we and other excursion operators would have offered our services and benefited from this market. We were looking to them for many reasons – new growth opportunities through additional guests/revenue, more groups/exclusive charters, branding of the destination, high-end clientele that may want an exclusive dinner or event at our establishment, and overall boosting of the local economy to benefit all citizens at stake.”

As a result of Baha Mar’s struggles, two group charters have already cancelled their bookings with the company.

“I can’t give the names but these are large corporate groups coming from the US – names that one would recognise – offering either their top clients or top producers high-end incentive trips to the Bahamas,” Ms Knowles said. “So these are not low-end customers, these are top-end customers who spend.”

As for the estimated amount in lost revenue, she said: “At this point the amount is still undetermined, but based on the direct loss of these two groups, (we’ve lost) upwards of $50,000 on cancelled business. The indirect loss isn’t measurable, but of course it affects us, and others.”

Ms Knowles’ statement comes after a tour driver told The Tribune that Baha Mar’s debacle could not have come at a worse time for those in the tourism industry.

Aaron Cox, an employee of Dan Knowles Tours based on Paradise Island, told this newspaper: “It is tough for taxi drivers when you have few to no flights coming in or when you have no cruise ships in the port. Baha Mar was supposed to bring a lot more guests so everyone, including taxi drivers, would feel that economic boost that we all needed, but that hasn’t worked out.”

Baha Mar was originally expected to open last December but delayed that date to March 27. The resort then missed that opening date as well as another date in early May. Since then, a new opening date has not been announced.

Baha Mar filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on June 29.

The Supreme Court is expected to give a ruling this Wednesday on whether it will approve the bankruptcy filing in the Delaware jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, the government has filed a winding up petition against the resort, which if approved in the Supreme Court, would take the property out of the control of developer Sarkis Izmirlian and place it under the oversight of provisional liquidators.