NEW YORK CITY – When the Jalousie Plantation resort in St. Lucia officially becomes re-flagged as a Tides Resort at the end of the year, it will be the latest Caribbean resort under the Viceroy Hotel Group's umbrella.
But don’t expect any more for a while.
Travel Agent chatted with Nicholas Clayton, president of Viceroy Hotel Group, at a Tuesday-morning breakfast, and learned that The Tides St. Lucia and Viceroy’s other Caribbean baby, the Viceroy Anguilla, will be relied upon to carry the company’s weight in the region before Viceroy decides to expand further in the Caribbean.
“I think it’s time to take a pause,” Clayton told us. “We really don’t want to dilute the effectiveness of these two resorts by adding resort after resort in the Caribbean. We are going to let these two properties continue to develop success in the Caribbean first. Then we will take some time -- a few months, a year—to decide where we’d like to be in the Caribbean next.”
And those two resorts are expected to maintain Viceroy’s momentum in the Caribbean until it decides to expand to a new island. The Viceroy Anguilla, which Clayton says remains "very hot" since opening the initial phase, which included 70 keys, at the end of last year. Clayton expects to open roughly 100 more keys and an additional restaurant at the resort by December 20.
Meanwhile, the Tides St. Lucia will undergo some soft renovations to bring up to Viceroy standards, but the resort’s room count is expected to remain the same. The location within more than 100 acres of rainforest in a UNESCO World Heritage destination, just a stones-throw away from the island’s famous Piton Mountains, is what will make this a hot resort in the Caribbean for years to come.
Visit www.viceroyhotelsandresorts.com.