by Brian Major
Last updated: 2:37 PM ET, Fri August 1, 2014
PHOTO: Construction continues at the Baha Mar resort. (Photo by Brian Major)
The Bahamas' $3.5 billion Baha Mar resort will delay its grand opening from December 2014 to "late spring" 2015, said a company spokesperson. The five-hotel mega-resort's individual properties will open in stages beginning in December, while Baha Mar "will start preview openings in December 2014 and continue preview openings through spring 2015, with a grand opening celebration planned for late spring 2015," said Michele Lee, a Baha Mar spokesperson.
Baha Mar president Tom Dunlap informed employees of the delayed grand opening through a letter, Lee said. Dunlap did not say which of the resort's four new properties - a 300-room SLS Hotels hotel; a 200-room Rosewood resort; a 700-room Grand Hyatt hotel and the 1,000-room Baha Mar Casino & Hotel, the mega-resort's anchor property - will open first or in what order the properties will debut. "We're working through the details with our partners, and expect to know more by October," Dunlap told the Bahamas Tribune newspaper.
The Baha Mar resort also includes the existing 694-room Melia Nassau Beach Resort, formerly the Sheraton Nassau Beach Resort, which is currently undergoing the first phase of a renovation that will transition the property to all-inclusive resort by December 2014. A Melia official said the company will re-name the property Melia at Baha Mar upon the 2016 completion of the renovation's third phase.
Robert Sands, Baha Mar's senior vice-president of government and external affairs, said earlier this year the resort had reached "pre-opening" phase, was 80 percent complete and would start taking bookings on July 1. Obie Wilchcombe, the Bahamas' tourism minister, told the Bahamas Tribune he was "neither surprised nor concerned" about the delay, which he said "helps us in work we have to do in terms of marketing and airlift."
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