34 Business View Caribbean - Dec 2014
Other tangible, though significantly smaller, markets
include Germany, Russia, Italy and France.
Some of the individual resorts do better with specific
clientele, according to Sylvia Scholey, Elegant’s vice
president of sales, marketing and e-commerce, who
said Turtle Beach, Tamarind and The House do well
with younger U.S. customers, while the Colony Club
and Crystal Cove tend to attract more traveling clien-
tele from Great Britain.
The annual group capacity rate hovers at or around 70
percent, she said. The typical busy season for all group
properties runs from November through April, but the
emergence of “shoulder seasons” has left June and
September as the only predictably down months
across the board.
“Year-round, they all do pretty well. Some have stron-
ger seasonality than others,” Scholey said. “The all-
inclusives (Crystal Cove and Turtle Beach) tend to run
high occupancy year-round because they tend to at-
tract the family summer business. They are drawing
big numbers in July and August.”
In terms of competition, and differentiating from it,
Chatrani said having four of the five Elegant proper-
ties (all but Turtle Beach) on the West Coast – locally
dubbed the “Platinum Coast” because of the selection
of high-end accommodations and the clientele they at-
tract – is a distinct advantage.
Also important, he said, is a cyclical corporate process
of reinvestment to upgrade all facilities.
“We continue to reinvest and upgrade year on year,
and have a very systematic program in which we do
it,” he said. “We go into each property and you can tell
that we’re actually spending money on each property.
We’re changing concepts and redefining the product
