With a new cruise port and major downtown redevelopment on the drawing board in Nassau, Bahamas, much of the focus is on the future. However, the two-year anniversary of the opening of the Baha Mar resort outside the city reminds that the massive complex has already delivered a major boost to the city, changing both the skyline and the options available to visitors, both for leisure and business.
Located about 10 minutes from the airport on the way into Nassau, the 2,300-room resort provides an alternative in size and scope to more distant Atlantis on Paradise Island. Indeed, it is so large that it has 5,000 full time employees and indirectly supports 15,000 more, who serve three anchor hotels, a casino, convention centre, plus golf course, tennis club, spa, shops, over two dozens bars and restaurants, 10 food trucks, and nightclub.
Hotel guests at the Grand Hyatt, Rosewood and SLS properties (providing a range of price points) uniquely share the aforementioned facilities, which also include an extensive network of outdoor swimming pools and beach.
Baha Mar also boasts the largest display of Bahamian art in the world (3,000 pieces, attended by a staff of 12), which is displayed throughout the resort and conference centre, as well as a significant flamingo habitat designed to help preserve the national bird of the Bahamas and which boasts its own CFO – chief flamingo officer. Guests can take part in flamingo walks (daily) or even do yoga with the birds.
However, despite appearances (spectacular though they may be), never far from the surface at Baha Mar, is the property’s complicated history, which include 15 years of stop-and-start planning and construction, at least two aborted openings (including as recently as 2015), ownership changes, government take-over, and foreign investment from China, to finally get the $4.5-billion resort opened in April, 2017.
Having been involved through much of Baha Mar’s history, resort president Graeme Davis says with no small amount of understatement, “We’re thrilled about where we’ve come from to where we are.”
Despite still enjoying such a well-earned honeymoon in 2020, the resort, which – for those who know Nassau – encompasses the former Crystal Palace Casino (which closed in 2015), and is beside the Melia Nassau (a popular haunt for Canadians when it was the Sheraton), has significant plans for the future.
The resort is continuing to expand, with a US$300-million waterpark under construction and exclusive beach club for guests with a children’s area and lazy river due in 2021. Facilities on a private offshore island (Long Cay) will also begin construction later this year while the Melia (owned by Baha Mar) will be renovated by 2022.
In the meantime, the resort will continue to expand its cultural offerings with events like the first-ever Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, scheduled for April 30 to May 4, and featuring top chefs, master sommeliers and popular local artists.