The Future of Nassau's Baha Mar Resort: A New Hotel, Jazz Club, and More
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In the seven years since its opening, the beachfront resort Baha Mar has become one of the Bahamas’ premier luxury escapes, offering travelers a paradisiacal getaway just a three-hour flight from New York City. Now, the brand has announced it will be constructing a new hotel steps away down Cable Beach, set to open in 2029.
Like other hotels and hospitality companies around the world, Baha Mar used the Covid-19 pandemic to assess its future. One question they contended with was what to do with Melia Nassau Beach, a dated all-inclusive owned by the same Hong Kong-based conglomerate that controls the main resort. The answer became clear in 2020 when the property remained closed even as Baha Mar itself reopened with a world-class Covid prevention and mitigation program. A staged demolition soon followed. But what would be next for the 12-acre site?
The answer is a hotel and residential project to be designed by the storied architecture firm of Foster + Partners, its first in the Caribbean, scheduled to break ground in 2026. The new structure will expand Baha Mar’s footprint to the west, beyond the spectacularly fun, three-year-old Baha Bay waterpark (do not sleep on it if you visit!), and will be connected to the rest of the resort by a common beach boardwalk. It will be set back from the beach to maximize the sun and minimize the shade—"even in the winter, when the sun is on the southern horizon,” says Graeme Davis, the president of Baha Mar. When the hotel is complete, it will give resort guests even more restaurants, beachfront, pools, and other amenities, but in the meantime its distance from the other properties will minimize disruption for visitors.
The 350-key hotel, for which the resort is currently seeking an international hospitality brand to partner, will join the resort’s current Rosewood, Grand Hyatt, and SLS offerings. It reflects Baha Mar’s growing investment in the Bahamian economy and community. Davis often cites the fact that Baha Mar brings in 12% of the Bahamas’ GDP—12%, which, notably, did not exist a decade ago, when the property was languishing in development hell before being rescued by the current ownership group. The resort’s presence on the island helped spur a resurgence in airlift to the Bahamas after the pandemic, with around 48 scheduled daily direct flights from the US at present. Baha Mar promises that the new property will create an additional 500 permanent jobs in the country. “It’s part of our commitment to building a sustainable tourism business,” Davis says.
As Baha Mar has grown, it has also sought to create new pathways for guests to connect with Bahamian life and culture. One of the most obvious examples has been the expansion of its arts program, the success of which had the knock-on effect of elevating the creative community in Nassau, which has seen numerous new galleries open over the last few years—some overseen by curators who had previously worked at the resort.
In the fall of 2022, John Cox, the executive director of arts and culture at Baha Mar, launched a second gallery, ECCHO, on the property (the first, The Current, was there at launch) in a 13,000-square-foot back-of-house space that had previously been used to store casino equipment and uniforms. “We begged, borrowed, and stole furniture from other parts of the property” to outfit it, Cox says. It now hosts between six and ten openings a year devoted to Caribbean artists (with a strong focus on the Bahamas), while also devoting space to work owned by the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas.
ECCHO and The Current are a catalyst for the Fuze Arts Fair, which now represents the second component in Baha Mar’s annual Culinary + Arts Festival, part of the resort’s crowded events calendar (the Derek Jeter Invitational, the former Yankees star’s annual charity golf tournament, was in full swing on my visit), which will have an expanded footprint and longer running time when it opens its tents later this month. Because of the Bahamas’ proximity to the US and ease of access, Cox believes it is “the best-situated country for a global art fair.” Davis, never shy about his ambitions for Baha Mar, says, “What I want this resort to be is the Art Basel of the Bahamas.”
He’d like it to be the music capital, too. To that end, he recently made the audacious move of removing a 20,000-square-foot chunk of his casino floor to open a 300-seat jazz club, set to open next month with a house band and a major celebrity attached. Davis is even contemplating a music studio, which could lure stars with homes in the Caribbean to hop over and lay down a few tracks, or entice podcasters in the States to come record a session before a live audience. “I want to give guests more than a roll of the dice or a lie on the beach,” he says.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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