The hotel is complete and the casino doors are open at Resorts World Bimini, in the Bahamas. The next challenge is transportation.
On Saturday, Resorts World officials celebrated the grand opening of the Hilton at Resorts World Bimini, with construction complete on the 305-room hotel, connected to the casino that the company opened in 2013.
Bimini is a collection of islands in the westernmost part of the Bahamas, just 53 miles from Miami. The Hilton is in North Bimini, part of a 7-mile island that is inhabited by about 2,000 residents. Most live in the less-developed southern part of the island, with hand-painted business signs and rundown and rickety homes. The churches have no air conditioning; if you walk by on a Sunday morning you can hear a collection of sermons from open doors in neighboring buildings.
Currently there are 42 charter, seaplane, and commercial flights each week to Bimini. Parent company Genting is working with the government to build an expanded landing strip, which would mean bigger and better planes could bring customers.
Boat transportation from Miami– but with a sleek passenger ferry instead of a cruise ship – is set for sometime this summer.
“We want to make it much more accessible,” Resorts World Bimini President Ed Farrell said. The current seaplane solution is very nice for those who take it – fewer than 30 minutes from Miami and not even a hint of cruise-ship style customs logjams – but a roundtrip flight costs about $400; that doesn’t work for the masses.
Resorts World Bimini follows the model of other Genting properties by not sticking slot machines in customers’ faces. Such an “integrated resorts” approach is possible for the company because most of their business is based on table games and bigger players, rather than slot machine play and a large volume of patrons.
That’s why events such as a blackjack tournament – an activity I still shake my head at – can pack Resorts World Bimini, as it did last month.
“Gamblers like to do crazy things when they’re not playing with their own money,” one expert said, noting the casino will comp the tournament entry fee for big players. The casino more than makes up for that outlay when everyone spends the rest of the weekend playing with their own thousands of dollars.
Resorts World Bimini also can offer the entire slate of casino games. By contrast, racetrack casinos in Florida have only slots, electronic table games and poker; the Seminole Casinos also have blackjack, baccarat and other table games. That makes Bimini the closest venue for craps, roulette, and a sports book. But the casino is relatively small: about 160 slot machines and 15 table games, approximately one-tenth of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, for example.
Resorts World Bimini is kind of a sidebar. Genting bought property in Miami in 2011, then failed to persuade the Florida legislature to allow resort-style casinos in Florida. Genting Group chairman KT Lim began working with Bimini officials in 2012 to open Resorts World Bimini, reviving a vision he had back in 1999 (it stalled.) Genting bought the Bimini Bay Resort, built the new casino, and embarked on building the Hilton while renting out nearby villas to gamblers.
Resorts World Bimini gives Genting at least a window into the South Florida market. Should the company ever find a way to open a casino in Florida itself, gamblers could be shuttled between the two properties, with Bimini being a good antidote for Resorts World’s fears of patrons heading to sunny South Beach and never returning.
For Bimini, there have been plenty of fits and starts, many linked to the introduction of the Bimini SuperFast, a cargo ship that transported guests from Port Miami to Bimini in a little under three hours. The SuperFast launched in July 2013 with two trips daily – one to Bimini and a night party cruise to nowhere, but Genting officials quickly learned that night party people don’t want to be trapped on a boat, committed to a specific period of time. Then SuperFast tried adding trips out of Fort Lauderdale, an endeavor that began in October 2014 and ended the same month because of a lack of interest. Passengers also complained that they were landed at Bimini via a tender because the ship was unable to dock on the island. (Genting fixed that, building its own jetty, something environmentalists objected to, but many said it was built responsibly and with minimal environmental effect.)
In October 2014 the daily cruise model was also scrapped, in favor or two- or -three-night visits. This January 10th, Genting made its final SuperFast trip. With that, the ship that officials called “our little red Ferrari” left town.
The Hilton partially opened in April 2015, but visitors still needed to be shuttled to the casino – only about 100 yards away – because of major hotel construction taking place between the two points. On Saturday, Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie and Lim led a ribbon cutting outside the main hotel entrance, and the indoor hallway between the hotel and the casino opened, as well as other Phase II portions: a pool atop the five-story building, a ground-floor lazy river, a spa, and more dining. The rooms are stylish and comfortable, with porches for guests to sit and watch the ocean or activity on the island. A quick shuttle takes guests to a beach featuring a bar-restaurant with wave runners, kayaks, water bikes, and paddle boarding.
“We’re going to spend the next 12 months working on what we have here in place now,” Farrell said.
The service at Resorts World has improved in the past three years, based on my four visits (the most recent being this month), but officials acknowledge there is still plenty of work to do in training an island whose laid-back residents may not all be naturals for working in the service industry. On my last visit, many of the hotel staff were very pleasant, peppering their conversation with “is there anything else you need?” The food service side is still uneven, officials acknowledge, although it might be better than what you get elsewhere in the Bahamas, overall.
Genting has about $15 billion invested in its Resorts World brand, which includes casinos in Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Queens (NYC), and (opening in 2018) Las Vegas. Genting spent $660 million on Bimini, about $180 million of which was on the hotel. Resorts World says it now employs 639, with 135 from Bimini and the others coming in daily from neighboring islands.
Farrell said the casino and its accompanying 18 suites appeal to bigger gamblers, but the beach, blue waters, and sunshine would attract families. Meanwhile, Bimini continues to be a fishing mecca, and those South Floridians who dock their boats to frequent local restaurants now have one more option, Farrell noted.
“It’s a ‘for-everybody’ resort,” he said.
On Saturday, a wedding took place on the beach, and Farrell said he expects more to come. “Our biggest growth is weddings,” he said. Cruise ships also could eventually stop at the island, he noted.
Prime Minister Christie’s speech Saturday stretched far beyond hotels and blackjack. He noted that Bimini had been frequented by Ponce de Leon; Ernest Hemingway; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Gary Hart (which brings a chuckle because Hart’s visit with Donna Rice in 1987 brought the Colorado senator’s campaign for the presidency to an end).
He also spoke of preserving the feel of the island. “When there is a conflict between tradition and modernization, we are mindful of the potential implications for such a conflict.
“Whoever is here 100 years from today … the government would want them to have the same wonderful eco-system experience we have today. And the developers have said the same thing,” Christie said, as Lim nodded from his seat.
