by Brian Major
Last updated: 12:45 PM ET, Tue June 23, 2015
PHOTO: Sandals will operate three properties in Antigua following its latest resort announcement. (Photo by Brian Major).
Sandals Resorts International is close to an agreement to purchasing the Halcyon Cove Hotel from the government of Antigua. The hotel is currently operating under a lease held by Rex Resorts, according to Ascot Michael, the country's tourism minister.
Michael said "negotiations have reached an advanced stage and we hope to close an agreement within the next 60 days or so," in a Jamaica Observer report confirmed by a Sandals spokesperson in New York.
Under the agreement the Dickenson Bay hotel will be demolished, said Michael. Gordon "Butch" Stewart, Sandals' chairman, "is very interested in knocking down the entire hotel," said Michael in theObserver report. A new 250-room Sandals-branded resort will then be built on the site.
When complete, the new Dickenson Bay resort will be Sandals' third Antigua property. The company is already planning a Beaches-branded resort at Long Bay, with opening scheduled for 2016. Sandals currently operates the Sandals Grande Antigua on Dickenson Bay; that property will adjoin the newest resort.
Stewart, who is also chairman of the Observer, said Antigua's government "has done everything possible in order to make this project feasible."
He added that Sandals has "spent huge sums of money expanding and modernizing" the 11 hotels the company operates in Jamaica. Stewart said Sandals is "engaged in serious discussion with Jamaica's government in relation to further expansion."
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