The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas must prevent future Fyre Festival-type debacles by demanding that event organisers post up-front financial guarantees, the Exuma Chamber of Commerce’s president is urging.

Pedro Rolle told Tribune Business that he and other Exumians became suspicious one month ago that the much-hyped Fyre Festival, organised by hip hop artist, Ja Rule, and his technology entrepreneur friend, Billy McFarland, was “not adding up”.

Mr Rolle said the level of on-site preparation in the run-up to the Fyre Festival’s planned April 28-30 debut did not match what was required for an event where tickets were sold for $12,000 per head.

When the Chamber heard the ticket prices being offered, Mr Rolle said it assumed visitors were being housed at Exuma’s high-end properties, such as Sandals Emerald Bay and Grand Isle Villas.

However, the Chamber found that “not a single deposit” for rooms at either resort had been paid by Fyre Festival organisers, immediately making executives suspicious that “something’s not right”.

Disclosing that he was “not surprised at all” by the fiasco that occurred over the weekend, Mr Rolle said he was “very concerned” about the reputational damage that Exuma and the wider Bahamas may have suffered as a result.

He called on the Bahamas to safeguard its good name against foreign promoters by mandating that they lodge a performance bond or some form of financial guarantee prior to the event’s staging, thus providing some evidence they had the necessary financing and would be penalised if they did not.

“We should have done our due diligence on Ja Rule and his entity,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business. “We should have done all these things.

“We can all be Monday morning quarterbacks, but everything didn’t seem to be in place from the beginning, and some of that has to be on us.”

The Exuma Chamber president added: “What should happen, if folks are coming in to put on this kind of a project, which is a high-end project; we should have place a letter of credit or bond from them, which compels them to ensure a certain level of production is done.

“If they can’t afford to put a certain amount of money down, they can’t afford to put this project on in a timely fashion.

“We need to do due diligence, and have financial commitments made, so that there are no disgruntled local workers, local contractors, whoever it is. Their payments should be guaranteed.”

To further guard against Bahamians being left out-of-pocket by foreign concert and event promoters, Mr Rolle said locals should be incorporated into the management and planning teams for such showcases.

“Fundamentally, I think we could have done a better job of ensuring everything was in place before this thing started getting promoted,”he reiterated of the Fyre Festival.

“This is a personal scepticism at the Chamber and its administrative level in Exuma. The question we were asking was this: For the money we heard people were paying, where were they were being housed?

“We thought it would be a combination of Sandals and Grand Isle for that kind of money. Those are the very high-end products in Exuma,” Mr Rolle continued.

“When we checked, no deposit had been paid. Don’t tell me people are spending this kind of money and are going to be housed in tents.

“That’s when we said something’s not right. It’s not adding up. We had no proof that everything was not in place. We didn’t have any facts. But that was our concern.”

Ja Rule and Mr McFarland said last week that they had supplied Fyre Festival, which was switched from one of the Exuma cays - believed to be Norman’s Cay - to the Exuma mainland, with a $20 million budget.

How that money was spent, and where, remains difficult to determine, given the chaos and disorganisation that met Fyre Festival goers when they arrived on Great Exuma late last week.

Bands such as Blink 182 had already pulled out, while survival tents instead of the promised luxury accommodation greeted visitors. Food and drink were also below the promised standards, and the Ministry of Tourism was required to help organise the departure of angry festival goers.

Ja Rule and Mr McFarland denied that Fyre Festival was a scam, as many people started alleging, and pledged to refund all who had bought tickets and help get them home.

However, the Bahamas’ reputation took a pounding ‘by association’ as a result of Fyre Festival, both on social media - via photos, postings and reports from those there on Exuma - and in the mainstream media.

‘Stranded in the Bahamas’ was how the UK’s Guardian newspaper headlined the Fyre Festival debacle, while some of the UK’s more excitable tabloid newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, were reporting how festival-goers were allegedly being attacked by “wild dogs” and “threatened” by local Bahamians. There were also reported claims that alcohol supplies for the event were being stolen and looted.

With social and mainstream media postings being accessed worldwide by millions, and many of the Fyre Festival goers likely to be experiencing Exuma and the Bahamas for the first time, the reputational fall-out for this nation could be significant.

Negative ‘word of mouth’ feedback from Fyre Festival attendees will spread rapidly, and all this comes at a time that the Bahamas can least afford such negative publicity, following four years of no economic growth.

Mr Rolle acknowledged the potential reputational fall-out, telling Tribune Business: “The Chamber were concerned from the time the event was being promoted.

“We expressed concerns earlier that if this was not done properly, that it was going to negatively impact Exuma. There are people who never heard of Exuma before this commotion started.

“Now, because of this experience, they are going to think negatively about Exuma and the Bahamas. This is bad for all concerned.”

Mr Rolle added: “We didn’t think sufficient emphasis was placed on doing the necessary due diligence. We didn’t think that, fundamentally, they took the time necessary to put everything in place. We didn’t get the sense of urgency.

“There were certain things that should have been done on the ground that did not materialise. We started to ask questions a month ago because they were not as far along as they should have been.”