{"id":49084,"date":"2014-02-16T12:06:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-16T17:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/target\/china-makes-inroads-in-the-bahamas-with-baha-mar-mega-resort"},"modified":"2014-02-16T12:06:59","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T17:06:59","slug":"china-making-inroads-in-the-bahamas-with-baha-mar-mega-resort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2014\/02\/china-making-inroads-in-the-bahamas-with-baha-mar-mega-resort","title":{"rendered":"China Making Inroads in The Bahamas with Baha Mar Mega-Resort"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"baha-mar\"Cement mixers from China and construction equipment rumble next to a premier strip of white sandy beach as thousands of Chinese workers labor to complete a $3.5 billion resort project at famed Cable Beach.<\/p>\n

Bahamian officials hope that the Baha Mar project \u2014 four new hotels, 200,000 square feet of convention space, an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course and a casino with a 50-foot glass water wall and a Vegas-style show lake \u2014 will transform Bahamian tourism, putting it on the map as a world-class gaming destination.<\/p>\n

Baha Mar developers plan to have the mega-resort open by mid-December, just in time for the winter tourism season.<\/p>\n

Baha Mar has amassed some of the world\u2019s most famous hospitality brands to operate its hotels. The centerpiece, the 1,000-room Baha Mar Casino & Hotel, will be managed by Global Gaming Asset Management, which has developed gambling resorts from Las Vegas to Manila.<\/p>\n

There also will be a 750-room Grand Hyatt, a 300-room Mondrian Hotel and a 200-room Rosewood Hotel. The Spanish hotel operator Meli\u00e1 recently took over operations of the Sheraton Nassau Beach Resort at Cable Beach and is running it as a Meli\u00e1 hotel. When renovation of the 694-room property is completed, it too will become part of the Baha Mar brand, operating as the all-inclusive Meli\u00e1 at Baha Mar.<\/p>\n

But Baha Mar is also noteworthy because of the extensive Chinese involvement in the high-profile project. Not only is the Export-Import Bank of China providing the bulk of the financing, China State Construction Engineering Corp. is the general contractor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s called transformation,\u201d says Robert Sands, a senior vice president for Baha Mar Ltd. Developer Sarkis Izmirlian, chairman and chief executive of Baha Mar, \u201cdidn\u2019t just want hotels on the beach; he wanted a destination,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of focus will be on the gaming aspect,\u201d Sands said.<\/p>\n

But the upscale resort, the largest tourism project under development in the Western Hemisphere, is something of a gamble.<\/p>\n

Click here to read the complete article at www.miamiherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baha Mar, the largest tourism project under development in the Western Hemisphere, is due to be completed at the end of this year.. but its success is still something of a gamble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":35961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[27,91,25,33],"class_list":["post-49084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-baha-mar","tag-china","tag-hotels","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}