66 October 2016 - Business View Caribbean
owners are not allowed to personalize their units – the
hotel décor is the same, throughout. Rental revenue
is split 50/50.” According to Spychalla, the 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 occu-
pancy rate, last year, the resort joined Preferred Resi-
dences, a worldwide hospitality membership and ex-
change program for luxury shared ownership resorts
and a partner of Interval International. Spychalla ex-
plains 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. So, it gives us
exposure that we would not have had, otherwise. We
can market our property to 1.8 million members of In-
terval’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
revenue has been by reconfiguring the typical Carib-
bean model of closing down a tourist hotel during the
summer “slow” season. “This property no longer clos-
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 ser-
vices to our guests during that period of time.”
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. “We had
a great summer,” he asserts, proving his point. “This
past July, my marina was up 27.2 percent, and my
rooms division was up 25.8 percent versus July, the
prior year. And my rooms division in August this year
