The Bahamas’ new Baha Mar super-resort has launched its first major marketing campaign to coincide with its official grand opening on November 1 and the pending opening of its second hotel.
Launched seven months after the US$4 billion property debuted its first phase and featuring an array of television commercials, the “Life Spectacular” campaign, as it’s called, is a “milestone,” said marketing Vice President Karin Salinas, an opportunity to “really go on a grander scale to showcase Baha Mar to the rest of the world”.
The resort’s second hotel, the 299-room SLS Baha Mar, the chain’s first hotel in the Caribbean, is scheduled to open November 14. A third hotel, the Rosewood Baha Mar, is slated to open in the spring, bringing the resort’s total to more than 2,300 rooms, suites and villas.
The first hotel, a Grand Hyatt, opened in April but has struggled to fill its 1,800 rooms. A July report by the ownership group, Baha Mar Ltd., a division of Hong Kong-based conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, claimed only around 50 percent occupancy, a performance Bahamas Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar has described as “kind of low.” D’Aguilar told the island nation’s Tribune newspaper the government has stressed that Baha Mar needs to “seek out new markets and new customers in order to grow the destination.”
