The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Wyndham Nassau Resort’s staff per available room ratio still exceeds the industry average by 30 basis points even after last week’s lay-offs, which cut the workforce by 27 per cent.

The 130 lay-offs, which were in line with the Wyndham’s 25-30 per cent room inventory reduction, were designed to reduce the resort’s losses and work towards a ‘break even’ financial position. A senior Baha Mar executive told Tribune Business that the resort has “consistently been unable to generate positive income for many years”.

However, hotel union executives told Tribune Business that they were not formally notified of the redundancies, and have instructed affected employees not to accept any compensation packages. They added that the Prime Minister had promised to meet Sarkis Izmirlian, Baha Mar’s principal, to discuss the issue.

Meanwhile, Robert Sands, Baha Mar’s senior vice-president of governmental and external affairs, told Tribune Business that the release of the 130 employees would still leave the Wyndham with 350 employees - a level above industry norms with regard to the employee per room ratio.

“Baha Mar regrets this decision, but we must continue to work to manage our business operations. We are roughly going to end up with having about 350 employees just on the Wyndham side - that does not include casinos - with 130 being let go. That still puts us above industry norms in terms of employee per room available and food and beverage outlets etc,” said Mr Sands.

“Wyndham used to be an 850-room hotel. We are now operating 415 rooms. Our head count will still put us at almost a 0.9 staff to one room, where industry standards for this type of operation are like 0.6. We still remain above industry norms even with these proposed work reductions. This is all about us trying to do a number of things.”

Mr Sands said that in addition to being faced with a challenged business climate, there were also a large number of Wyndham employees who were under-performing.

“Sometimes we have no choice but to reinvent our approach to industry’s best practices to service, maintenance and overall operations of our resort. I think it’s about us reducing losses and working towards a break even,” Mr Sands told Tribune Busines.

“More importantly, this allows us to really work towards putting in place an opportunity where we can provide exceptional service to our customer and, at the same time, be able to be in an environment that does not allow the hotel to experience significant losses.

“This hotel has consistently been unable to generate positive income for many years. I think what we are trying to do is to keep it as a financially viable operation while we continue to work with what is coming on-line in 22 months.”

Mr Sands added that construction on the Baha Mar project has also affected the Wyndham’s ability to generate business.

“In addition to being unable to provide the customer-quality relationships for persons who chose to stay ever, its close proximity to the construction is a major element that really hindered its ability to attract the volume of business that we need to continue to make this a viable operation,” he added.

Mr Sands recently told Tribune Business that Baha Mar was expecting a 4 per cent occupancy growth at the Sheraton, but a “deterioration” at the Wyndham sparked at least in part by a 25-30 per cent inventory drop.

Meanwhile, Darren Woods, vice-president of the Bahamas Hotel, Catering & Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU, told Tribune Business: “We met with the Prime Minister on Friday and he said that he is going to have a meeting with Mr Izmirlian.

“We are going to get with the Department of Labour in the meantime. We told the employees not to accept anything. We had no notice of this. Some of the employees called us asking if we knew about a general meeting Friday morning. That’s where they told the employees that their services were no longer need. We had just talked with them about some other employees, and they made no indication to us about any further redundancies.”