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Building frenzy in Caribbean leaves sour taste for some.
Once upon a time, palm trees, sea turtles and Carib and Arawak Indians populated a necklace strand of 7,000 islands, islets, reefs and cays that curved 2,500 miles southeast from Grand Bahama Island off Florida to Trinidad, scant miles from Venezuela's coast.
So many islands, so little time. Even the Caribbean's first tourist was overwhelmed by the choices. "I saw so many islands that I could hardly decide which to visit first," Christopher Columbus reported to Queen Isabella in 1493.
The choices for today's visitors are just as daunting, but travel guidebooks, word-of-mouth recommendations, the guidance of agents, Web sites, blogs and clever packaging by operators help to winnow the choices.
But what about where to stay?
With more than 300,000 rooms in 7,250-plus hotels, guesthouses, apartments and villas, and more opening faster than the price of gas rises, that decision can be more confusing than trying to decipher room categories and rate structures. Those totals, by the way, include 45,270 rooms in 471 properties in Cuba.
Throw in an unparalleled building frenzy bulldozing its way down the sweeping curve of powder-white, palm-fringed beaches, and the ruckus could be enough to send those who yearn for the quaint beach shacks and barefoot beer joints of yesteryear off to isolated stretches and calmer seas elsewhere.
There aren't a lot of those beach shacks left, although the Caribbean's small hotels and inns are a tough lot with fiercely protective clientele who balk at change and want few people to know where they go "limin' " -- a West Indies word for kicking back and checking out.
Investors and developers are tramping sea grasses all over the region, funneling huge amounts of money, jump-starting island economies for a time by hiring lots of local labor, promising post-construction jobs in the hospitality industry and altering skylines with structures much higher than the palm trees.
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These days, very few of the big hotel projects are just hotels. The catchphrase seems to be "multipurpose destination resorts" that contain structures called condotels (condominium hotels) along with all-suite properties and a growing list of must-have facilities: casinos, marinas, golf courses, shopping villages, private residences, villas and infinity pools galore. Not everybody is happy about this construction boom. In fact, the relationship between developer and islander often is fractious. Big development is a touchy issue on several fronts, yet investors, bankers, developers and owners are rarely turned away by island governments. Caribbean hotels have profited from strong increases in demand, which has produced substantial gains in revenue per available room. The region has benefitted from an increasingly competitive airline market as well as more airlift to and from emerging and traditional destinations. In a new era of Caribbean tourism, the bar has been raised again, with demands for even higher standards of leisure and luxury. This has presented hotels with opportunities to create new streams of revenue. And bigger and bigger developments, it seems. But is bigger better? Pose the question to Even the best-kept "secret" locations are not safe. Consider remote Rum Cay, an island nine miles long by five miles wide, 40 miles east of Great Exuma in the Bahamas Out Islands, population 100. In May, ground was broken there for a $700 million mixed-use resort development project that will include a 200-slip marina for megayachts, a luxury hotel, residences, restaurants and shops, a spa and fitness facilities. And in the Dominican Republic, which of all the Caribbean destinations is perhaps the key barometer of the building boom, real estate projects are sprouting like palm trees. Also in the works are Antigua's first new condotel in 20 years, a 200-room project of villas and bungalows by Miami-based BAP Development. In Puerto Rico, Bahia Beach outlined plans for a master-planned resort community on a former coconut plantation 25 minutes from San Juan. Incredibly, the list goes on and on. Source: Travel Weekly |
Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and the answer is fairly obvious. When it burst upon the scene 12 years ago, Atlantis was the biggest game in town. Today, it has 2,317 rooms, but that's nothing compared to what lies ahead for Atlantis. Owner Sol Kerzner of Kerzner International will complete a billion-dollar expansion next spring of his Paradise Island playground, complete with the addition of Waterscape, which will reportedly be the largest water park in the Caribbean. The park will have water slides and rides that will transport guests through tropical jungles, whitewater rapids and underground waterways.
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