The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor THE Government's efforts to encourage a deal that would see Grand Bahama's still-closed 840-room Royal Oasis resort change ownership have yet to bear fruit, the minister of tourism conceding yesterday that the property "sits there with no immediate prospect of re-opening". Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace disclosed to Tribune Business that the Ingraham administration had attempted to replicate the success achieved when it encouraged Sandals Resorts International to acquire the Emerald Bay resort from receivership, "sending" several investors and hotel operators/owners to talk to current Royal Oasis owner, Dublin-based Harcourt Developments. This, though, has yet to produce any results, the minister conceding that the Government could not get itself directly involved in what would be a transaction between two private sector partners. "When we last checked, there wasn't much going on in terms of redeveloping and re-opening that site," Mr Vanderpool-Wallace told Tribune Business. "It's privately owned, although the Government will step in, as it did with Four Seasons and Sandals. ...... We have sent people to speak to Harcourt. But they are always private transactions we can't get involved in. Very little has come so far in providing a solution for that." Harcourt Developments ultimately acquired the Royal Oasis for $33 million in 2007, just before the 'credit crunch' and subsequent recession hit. The Irish hotel and real estate developer had to suffer through some protracted negotiations with the property's previous owner, the Driftwood/Lehman Brothers combination, who at several stages entertained rival offers before ultimately returning to the earlier one left on the table by Harcourt. The recession ultimately placed Harcourt's plans to repair and redevelop the Royal Oasis, which was closed following damage sustained during Hurricane Frances in 2004, into 'cold storage' - where they have remained ever since. Harcourt was said to be highly leveraged already going into the recession, and it has preferred to focus any development efforts closer to home, namely its 'Titanic' project and associated regeneration of Belfast City Centre. However, the loss of the Royal Oasis's 840 rooms, representing 40 per cent of Grand Bahama's hotel inventory, has had a continuing devastating effect on Grand Bahama's tourism product. And the loss of all the hotel's 1,200 direct jobs has been a blow that the island's economy has yet to recover from. "Harcourt really got caught in Ireland, and their real estate valuations were simply decimated," Mr Vanderpool-Wallace told Tribune Business. "That was the basis on which they acquired the property, the funding, so that property [the Royal Oasis] sits without any immediate prospect of re-opening. When you lose 40 per cent of your rooms it's a devastating effect." The minister added that the Royal Oasis situation, and its wider impact on Grand Bahama, were acting as "a drag" on the Bahamas' overall tourism product. "One of the things you have to look at, and the Bahamas is peculiar in this regard, is that we aggregate the rooms in the Bahamas. But with the archipelago we have, Grand Bahama has been a significant drag on the Bahamas for the last several years, largely because of the closure of the Royal Oasis, which was 40 per cent of the rooms in Grand Bahama," Mr Vanderpool-Wallace said. Describing the Royal Oasis closure as "a sore point for a while", John Swain, president of the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce, yesterday told Tribune Business: "It would be good if something could happen; that's the bottom line. "On the tourism side that was a major player in the sector, and it acted as a feeder property for the smaller hotels to sustain themselves based on the overspill from that hotel. "So when the Royal Oasis closed it impacted not only that property but other properties as well. That's why the impact was so significant. There was a downturn in the Grand Bahama tourism product, and we continue to feel the effects of that today." Mr Swain warned that the longer the Royal Oasis remained closed, the more damage would be done by nature. He added that Grand Bahama needed to work "on bringing in new owners and operators to bring tourism back". "Tourism has worked on this island, and has the potential to work again," Mr Swain told Tribune Business.