NASSAU, Bahamas, September 16, 2020 — Days after several major resorts announced they will not reopen on October 15, Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar yesterday admitted the news was not a complete surprise to officials as hotel operators had already indicated their intent to resume operations after the US election in November, The Tribune reported on September 16, in an article written by Leandra Rolle.
His comments came after a number of the country’s top resorts — including Baha Mar, its Melia Nassau Beach property and Club Med in San Salvador — announced they will not reopen on October 15, the date recommended by the tourism ministry for the resort industry’s return.
Some resorts have even indicated that they may not resume operations until Christmas, with one property saying it won’t reopen until late 2021.
Speaking to reporters on the issue ahead of yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Mr D’Aguilar said while the decisions made by hotels were not entirely a shock to his ministry, officials still decided to resume with its reopening plans for hotels in a bid to jumpstart the country’s leading industry.
He said: “So, we were well aware of the position of a number of the hotels. Clearly, Baha Mar made an announcement in July that they would be opening on October the first and when I had my press conference, I said that we will be reopening on October 15. So obviously, we’ve been in discussions with Baha Mar and with Atlantis and we were well aware that they were not going to open, certainly not on October 1. So, we were well aware of that.”
The Tourism Minister added, “A number of those large hotels indicated that they wanted to wait until after the American elections and possibly open just before Thanksgiving and possibly before Christmas and we said ‘okay fine, that’s fair enough’. But we’re going to go ahead and announce on October 15 to get the ball rolling, to get people starting to think about it. It takes a little bit of time to ramp up so we decided to go with October 15 as a day to get everybody to start thinking about it. “Opening a large hotel is a very complex and difficult undertaking. It’s so many moving parts that you have to get in place and in addition to that, they have to be comfortable with the fact their core markets out of the United States – where they would be receiving most of their guests – are in a position to travel right now.” See complete Tribune story at http://www.tribune242.com/news/2020/sep/16/resort-delays-not-complete-surprise/
