The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

WITH Baha Mar marketing itself as an “upmarket” adult resort destination, a senior executive yesterday said service excellence was “critical” to the brand’s long-term success.

“When you have a resort that is targeting the luxury market, service excellence is critical,” said Vaughn Roberts, senior vice-president of finance and corporate alliances at Baha Mar.

“For us it’s a big deal. Part of it obviously is recruiting and attracting the best people and then giving them opportunities once they’re on board to continue to deliver on the service that’s required

“We will be successful to the extent that we can achieve the service standard that’s important to our guests. I think that for us it’s significant because our entire resort is about luxury. It’s a big opportunity for us, it’s a big challenge.”

Mr Roberts, who was a panellist at the 2013 KPMG Infrastructure conference said that the resort, set to open in late 2014, would create 5,000 jobs initially, with possibly up to 7,000 ultimately being created.

Mr Roberts said that establishing the Baha Mar brand was critical to driving the demand for more airlfit.

“Airlift is a significant opportunity for us. If you think about it, every guest coming to Baha Mar needs to be thought of as a new guest coming to the Bahamas. From that perspective it’s all incremental. We have to do our part in driving the demand from our potential guests,” said Mr Roberts.

He added: “We have to create this thing called Baha Mar that’s pretty compelling for people, and launches the destination in a way that people will opt to come here as opposed to going other places.

“There’s a collective effort being undertaken by all of the industry participants. We’re a year-and-a-half out. We have time to solve it and we have a lot of new ideas and creative strategies.”