The tourism picture is bleak and worsening. That's not news.
But the story on the sale of Waterloo house, ending its time as a tourism property as it will be redeveloped into commercial residential space, was interesting for this comment from the developers:
Originally they wanted to build a hotel on the site as they own other hospitality properties in London, but found it was too small."We could not get the numbers to work as we would not have been able to have enough rooms," Mr. Green said. "We are now hoping to do a combination of office and residential.
An investor is on record admitting that the numbers for small properties no longer work. It's hard to see how the numbers work for larger properties in Bermuda as well.
The financing and capital just doesn't seem to exist for large scale developments in Bermuda; and it's hard to see the new Tucker's Point Hotel's experience as inspiring to potential hotel developers.
The optimist in me hopes someone finds a way to make this work, but the realist in me wonders what the economic model for hotel development in Bermuda is?
The numbers for small developments don't work, the capital required for large developments doesn't seem available for Bermuda? Something has to give if tourism development in Bermuda is to make sense to potential developers and financiers: capital is limited, labour costs are high, staffing and immigration rules are onerous, air arrivals are in a free fall, on island entertainment is almost non-existent, St. George's is a ghost town.
A couple of weeks ago the Gazette ran an article that frankly seemed delusional, listing off the same old properties all saying financing is in place and they'll be breaking ground shortly. We've heard this before, for years in fact.
I propose a new rule: no-one - particularly the outgoing Premier - is allowed to declare that a tourism development is imminent until the bulldozers are idling behind the press conference.
To date, the outgoing Premier/Tourism Minister's greatest tourism achievement has been the implosion of an old hotel. That about sums up his time at the helm.
