Business View Caribbean
9
es during the slow season, as it has done in the past,”
he declares. “When I came, I made the conscious deci-
sion we were going to stay open and provide full servic-
es to our guests during that period of time. And we’ve
really grown the revenue. For instance, in the past, we
may have closed in August. Well, from August of last
year to August of this year, we increased revenue by 38
percent. The same thing is happening in the month of
September,” he adds.
Another advantage of remaining open, according to
Spychalla, is that it encourages airlines to institute
regular flights to the region. “Because we’re not clos-
ing, we’re able to get some additional air lift to the is-
land from Atlanta,” he says. “So two flights a week are
going to be coming from Atlanta starting in December
and the airlines have the expectation that there will be
passengers year round. Germany wants to send an air-
line to the Bahamas once or twice a week, year round.
That cannot work if the Out Islands are going to close
for three months every year.”
Spychalla is adamant about the benefits of year-round
tourism, and uses his positions as President of the
Bahama Out Islands Promotion Board (BOIPB) to try
and convince other hotels to stay open, too. “This busi-
ness of closing for six or eight or ten weeks because
it’s slow, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we stay open,
eventually people are going to understand that we are
open year round, and we’ll benefit accordingly,” he
maintains.
Currently, Valentines has no major refurbishing plans
on the books. “The property is built out,” Spychalla re-
ports. “There is the opportunity to build a fifth villa,
with eight to ten more units, and we do have approval
from the government to do that. But right now that’s
not something that we want to do; it might be some-
thing that we would consider in the future. What I’m
