The Bahamas boutique resort and vacation industry is the envy of the Caribbean and Real Estate Brokerage firm Engel & Volkers believes it has a real estate opportunity that can revolutionize the hospitality industry on Cat Island. The firm has listed three properties for sale in the southern end of the island including Greenwood Beach Resort, Fernandez Bay Resort, and the private island Hawks Nest Cay at the southwestern tip.
Fernandez Bay Resort
Fernandez Bay was founded and has been owned and operated by the same visionary for almost 50 years while Greenwood Beach Resort has been a family-run business for over 25 years and has seen 2 generations of family ownership. In both circumstances, the current owners feel it is time for them to move on. Each resort has been a lifestyle business for their owner-operators where they have poured their time, love, and effort into accommodating guests from all over the world, many of whom return year after year. Hawks Nest Cay is a vacant 40-acre island with approximately one mile of linear waterfront. The “back yard” of the island has extensive flats and mangroves which is one of the best fly-fishing areas on Cat Island. Both Greenwood Beach Resort and Fernandez Bay are situated on incredible beaches and have been run profitably for decades.
Advisor Leo Huber, the listing agent for Fernandez Bay says, “The Hotel is built using locally sourced cut native stone and lumber and sits right in the middle of the most beautiful leeward-facing beach. The whole setup has been built to compliment and blend into its environment. Everything is so relaxed that the bar is on an honour system. It’s difficult to know or even think of what to change. Fernandez Bay is already a model of what a hotel product in the Family Islands of The Bahamas should be.”
The Hospitality Industry is changing
The hospitality industry has seen major disruptions over the past decade, primarily from the growth of the vacation rental industry, and The Bahamas out islands including Cat Island are no exception. Goldman Sachs recently revealed that once people have stayed in “peer-to-peer lodging” (vacation rentals), the likelihood that they prefer traditional hotels in the future is cut in half. In 2016, the website Travel Weekly published information that the vacation rental inventory in the US doubled while hotel inventory was growing by only 1.1% which leads some experts to predict that vacation rental accommodation will surpass hotel inventory in the very near future.
According to the vacation rental website HomeAway, Maturing millennials, who now top out at nearly 40 years old, often travel with multiple generations or with friends vacationing together. Additionally, more than 81% of Gen Z, who top out in their twenties have already stayed in a vacation rental property with their families.
