Business View Caribbean | October 2019

31 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN OCTOBER 2019 VALENT INES RES IDENCES , RESORT & MAR INA it yet – maybe Cupid’s? That would tie in with the Valentines theme. “As far as the property is concerned, we have fitted out a new state of the art gym, including a Peloton cycle. We have a conference room that’s second to none in the Caribbean. The conference table seats 20 with Zoom teleconferencing technology for crystal clear sound. It’s very upscale. And with added seats, we can easily accommodate 30 people in the room. We’ve never gone after groups before, but this year, I’ve hired a high-powered Groups & Events Manager with fabulous hotel experience, who works for us exclusively in the U.S. She has a lot of connections in the industry and we’ve already started seeing some small groups. I want to do corporate retreats, small business retreats, activity themed, and maybe some religious retreats, family reunions - that type of thing. We’re also having wedding business that we haven’t done before – weddings up to 125 persons. So that’s a great opportunity.” BVC: What is your target demographic? Spychalla: “Valentines is a family-friendly resort, generally, with a lot of boaters. So we have different demographics that we have to satisfy. We have to take care of the owner of a 30-million- dollar yacht; we have to take care of their crew; we have to take care of the owners of the sport fish boats – those guys like to drink beer, eat hamburgers, and smoke cigars – so, that’s the third demographic. “And then we have guests who want to stay in the hotel. Some are high net-worth, world travellers and have high expectations; interestingly, it’s the younger, professional guests who have the highest expectations, because they work really hard to save money for their vacation, and we have to deliver. The last demographic are the locals that live on the island. There are about 200 private homes on the island owned by ex-patriots. Some of those are rented, but we find a lot of those people visit our restaurants. And we also have our local residents who live here year-round that visit our restaurants. We have a lot of very different needs and we have