February 2017 |Business View Caribbean

62 63 Valentines Residences Resort & Marina majority of Valentines’ guests – about 85 percent – come from the United States, and about 40 percent of that number are from Florida. In order to maximize Valentines already healthy occupancy rate, the resort recently joined Preferred Residences, a worldwide hospitality membership and exchange program for luxury shared ownership resorts and a partner of Interval International. Spychalla explains the benefits of membership: “It allows our own- ers to be in an exchange program; they can spend two or three weeks of their three months in another resort in the Interval family and there are 5,000 of them, worldwide. It also brings owners of those properties to the Bahamas to see what we have, as we still have some developer units available for sale. Somebody on an exchange may be a condo owner from Aspen who comes and stays here and says ‘I like this – I’ll buy one of the remaining units.’ So, it gives us exposure that we would not have had, otherwise.We can market our proper- ty to 1.8 million members of Interval’s iPrefer Loyalty program. So, for a very small fee, it’s a good way to expose our property.” Another way in which Spychalla has generated new reve- nue has been by reconfiguring the typical Caribbean model of closing down a tourist hotel during the summer “slow” season. “This property no longer closes during the slow season, as it has done in the past,” he declares. “When I came, I made the conscious decision we were going to stay open and provide full services 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 Spy- challa, is that it encourages airlines to institute regular flights