The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A South Andros resort has joined a 500-member luxury hotel association as it readies for a November 1 opening following renovations underway amid the COVD-19 pandemic.

Wilfried Vincent, general manager of the Tiamo Resort, confirmed to Tribune Business that the property has joined the Relais & Chateaux association. He said: “For the guests this means a dream will be fulfilled. When you look at the Relais & Chateaux it is all world-class for the restaurant, so I hope it will be well received next year with the first Relais & Chateaux brand in The Bahamas.”

Relais & Châteaux is an association of individually-owned and operated hotels and restaurants, with more than 500 members in 60 countries.

“For the marketing of the Relais & Chateaux brand, it is a very high-held brand with very high-end luxury restaurant services,” Mr Vincent added. “It is top quality, with the best service and a product like an a-la-carte menu, fresh food every day from the farms on the island and the sea. It’s a very broad clientele from around the world.

“On August 1 we will officially have the sign in front of the resort. Unfortunately we cannot open because the business is very tricky, but for us it is not a big problem because we are doing renovations and we will be ready to open on November 1.”

He continued: “We already started our renovations now because the resort has been closed from the end of March, so it will be a brand new hotel from November 1. From March 25, due to the pandemic, we closed the resort with 100 percent cancellations.

“We refunded a lot of bookings. It was terrible for our repeat guests, especially during spring and now for summer. Our clientele are from Europe; central and eastern Europe was locked down. Now the problem is from the US, as Europeans don’t want to cross and transit to the US. So I decided to re-open on November 1 for a new season and fingers crossed. I hope we can find a real solution for The COVID-19.”

Mr Vincent added: “We are on-site now with seven persons. We never go outside of South Andros, and have not left South Andros since March. We started out renovations slowly. This week we will start to refurbish all of our swimming pools as well as add new technologies in rooms, like tablets for the guests, because there is no more paper due to COVID-19 regulations.

“This is going to be a step-by-step. It is not possible to tell you all of what we have planned because I won’t share the surprise when it’s done at the reopening date on November 1.”