The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A MAJOR Grand Bahama hotelier yesterday said his property is losing between $200,000 to $300,000 per month, as he lamented: “We need something to go our way.”

Magnus Alnebeck, Pelican Bay’s general manager, told Tribune Business that leisure tourism on the island was virtually “non-existent” with just 400-500 hotel rooms available - and his property accounting for at least 40 percent of them.

Disclosing that Pelican Bay’s occupancy levels have been running at between 20-40 percent per month since the COVID-19 pandemic started, apart from the periods including the most severe lockdowns, he said Grand Bahama’s leisure visitors “can be counted on a few hands” with both cruise tourism and the Grand Lucayan closed down.

Suggesting that the island was unlikely to feel any benefits from the tourism industry’s re-opening ahead of the upcoming Christmas holidays, Mr Alnebeck said Grand Bahama was “a pretty desperate place at the moment” as he warned it was “absolutely essential” for something to happen with the Grand Lucayan deal.

This newspaper revealed earlier this week that the Government has hired consultants, believed to be the KPMG accounting firm, to review the merits of the ITM Group/Royal Caribbean purchase of that resort amid increasing doubts that the terms as they currently stand deliver significant enough economic benefits for the Bahamian people.

Mr Alnebeck said that unless the acquisition started to move forward soon, the Government might have to explore other options for the resort, given the urgent need to make “something happen” for a Grand Bahama economy that has now been in distress for 16 years since the Royal Oasis closure.

With Pelican Bay traditionally experiencing a drop-off in its core corporate customer base after Thanksgiving through to the middle of January, the resort chief said he was bracing for a quiet Christmas.

“We are now at about 20 percent occupancy,” Mr Alnebeck told Tribune Business. “We have been going back and forth from 20 percent to sometimes 40 percent. That’s where we’ve been apart from may and June, when we had severe lockdowns.

“We are probably losing $200,000 to $300,000 in cash every month. Of course, if you want a hotel to maintain its value, you have to keep on maintaining it and I think that’s the problem with some of our hotels in The Bahamas that are not owned by companies with big pockets. Do they even have the money to start up?”

Mr Alnebeck said the unresolved reconstruction of Grand Bahama International Airport; salt contamination of the island’s water supply; and the “non-functioning” Rand Memorial Hospital all meant the island is “not the best place to be” for tourists - especially if a medical emergency occurs.

“The leisure tourists can really be counted on as few hands,” he told this newspaper, saying they were likely to be persons visiting residents or boaters. “At the moment the leisure tourist market does not exist in Grand Bahama.

“Pelican Bay has 184 rooms, and we have some smaller hotels. I really don’t believe it’s more than 400 to 500 rooms open in Grand Bahama, and pandemic or not it’s going to take time before something else happens.

“Rock bottom is the last person to leave the island and turn off the lights. We’re far from that, but from a tourism perspective I would say rock bottom has been reached. Because of the pandemic we have no cruise passengers, and that’s what saved us for the last four years,” Mr Alnebeck added.

“We need economic activity. We need something to happen. Grand Bahamians are quite resilient, and have got used to an economy that doesn’t really work, but it’s a pretty desperate place at the moment. We need something to go our way.”

Mr Alnebeck said the Grand Lucayan had been “standing there as a monument on the beach” for the past four years ever since Sunwing/Memories pulled out in the wake of Hurricane Matthew and their dispute with then-owner Hutchison Whampoa, taking a substantial chunk of the island’s airlift with them.