The owner of Nassau's latest boutique hotel, The Island House, said there has been huge demand for the property since its doors opened last month. According to Mark Holowesko, the 30-room hotel "fills a void" in the island's tourism portfolio, where smaller, community-focused properties have become scarce with the rise of the mega-resort model.
"We have a lot of big hotels in terms of the number of rooms," Holowesko said during an official opening ceremony earlier this year. "There's a certain clientele that wants that but there's a huge number of people around the world that want to come to The Bahamas and stay at smaller properties, get more of a local feel and interact more with the community."
This assessment of current trends in tourism is correct. Today's high-net-worth individuals from the United States, Europe and emerging economies in Asia and South America are willing to scour the globe in search of intimate, luxurious, eco-friendly resorts. Most of all, they crave experiences featuring interaction with a destination's authentic heritage - both cultural and natural.
For decades, The Bahamas has traded on its reputation of "sun, sand and sea", yet the rich biodiversity of this nation has a great deal more to offer the intrepid, adventurous traveler. Meanwhile, our visual and musical culture has occupied less and less of a central role in our tourism product. The Island House does more than simply fill a void and keep pace with emerging trends, however. As a fully Bahamian-owned, Bahamian-financed, Bahamian-built resort, it exemplifies what may be the ideal model for future tourism development in the country.
Over the last 40 years, meaningful Bahamian ownership in the industry has remained an elusive national ambition, particularly in New Providence and Grand Bahama. It is unrealistic to imagine that the mega-resort model will be dominated by local investment at any point in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, projects on the size and scale of The Island House are not beyond the reach of established Bahamian business interests - or for that matter, groups of young, ambitious, aspiring entrepreneurs.
Smaller high-end projects tend to create a diverse range of lucrative employment opportunities, as the wealthy traveler will pay top dollar for authentic, interactive experiences guided by local experts. In addition, such resorts can act as a shot in the arm to nearby businesses, forming a close and mutually beneficial economic relationship with the surrounding community in a way that larger all-inclusive resorts sometimes fail to. Our politicians have always been eager to announce the arrival of large-scale foreign direct investment, particularly the big job numbers that tend to go with it. While it may not offer the same kind of instant gratification, encouraging and incentivizing smaller, home grown, sustainable resort projects may ultimately prove to be a wiser strategy in the long run.
The Holowesko family is therefore to be commended, not only for investing in The Bahamas and creating employment opportunities for Bahamians, but also for pointing the way forward for anyone ambitious enough to follow.
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