BREAKING NEW GROUND!

The Crane Resort & Residences is doing just that in the parish of St Philip, setting its sight on a new development near Culpepper Island along with a possible bid to purchase Sam Lord's Castle.

Managing Director Paul Doyle made the revelation yesterday during the launch of their new Resort Village and Town Hall, specifically designed as an event facility at the Crane, St Philip, now managing 202 rooms, heading to 400 by the time construction is completed next year.

Doyle said he had no intentions of competing on the South or West Coast but expanding along the coast in St Philip, a niche market he had become comfortable with.

"This business model has worked well for us and we want to continue on this coast. I've been working hard the last couple of years on designing a new project that is further along this coast, near Culpepper Island.

"Apart from that, there is nothing more we would like than to take the construction team we have here and just go down the road and continue building at the Castle.

"That would be our perfect scenario, assuming CLICO does not want to be in the resort business today, we want to be in it, we are ready, we know what we are doing, we have the team, the architects and we would really fix up Sam Lord's Castle," Doyle said.

While many other resorts have been hard hit by the global recession, Doyle admitted that they had scaled back somewhat but would still be pushing ahead to complete an additional 30 rooms by November.

"We have slowed down somewhat because we were building at a faster clip and we wanted to be prudent and careful so we scaled back a bit this year. However, we have a good team and strong marketing in place.

"Currently, we have finished about half the rooms, 202 rooms at the moment, and we have 196 to go with 80 of those under construction. And we'll finish about 30 of them by November," Doyle added.

In relation to their occupancy, Barbadians are filling the rooms each weekend according to their director of marketing, Annmarie Thompson who said the "staycation" promotion had worked well even before its inception this year.

"We started our staycation programme since last year and a lot of locals come on weekends with our $300 a night special which runs through to November.

"Even our Thai and Japanese restaurant, Zen, has been patronised well by Barbadians and this new village offers more of our heritage for them to enjoy," she said, adding that within the coming months, three restaurants, a bakery, general store, craft shop, piano bar and art gallery will be added to the Resort Village. (PCA)