Above: the Four Seasons Nevis Resort (Photo: Caribbean Journal)

By Alexander Britell

Four Seasons Caribbean Regional Vice President Andrew Humphries has overseen the $120 million reconstruction and renovation of the Four Seasons Nevis Resort, where he is the General Manager. Humphries has worked to bring Nevis’ largest hotel back after it reopened in December following damage from Hurricane Omar. The resort is at the epicenter of a new green movement in Nevis, and has a series of eco-friendly features — even using produce from farms owned by its staff.  Caribbean Journal talked to Humphries about sourcing local produce in the Caribbean, developing Nevis tourism and tapping into the Italian tourism market.

How has the response to the reopening been so far?

I think the way the customers have received the changes – both old customers and customers that are new to us – have been very positive. The most positive thing has been the service we’re delivering – that has been very positively received.

How have Nevis’ tourism market and the Caribbean tourism market at large been developing?

Unfortunately, I don’t think the market has developed very much in many ways. The market is in a tough part of the economic cycle, and we’re in the same situation as many other Caribbean hotels. The market is soft, and air travel is becoming increasingly expensive, so that’s an issue for all Caribbean destinations. And we’re certainly having to fight hard for those customers – not just those customers who think of the Caribbean as a destination but anyone else in the world as well. It’s a tough year, and I think it’s going to be a tough year next year for all Caribbean hotels. The market certainly hasn’t developed as much as we would like, but those are the realities of our situation.

How has progress been at the resort this year?

I think, number one, people feel the service is exceptional. I wouldn’t be so bold to say it’s better than anywhere else, but it’s been very well received, and we’re very pleased with that. I think the landscaping – we spent $4.5 million on that – has been very well received by clients. It looks really beautiful. It’s added another dimension to the resort – both in terms of the feel of the resort, the privacy, all those elements. I think our rooms, and the work we’ve done on the interiors of the restaurants are all very positively received.

Can you talk about the way you source local produce?

It’s always been a focus. We buy a lot of our produce, actually, from our own staff. They may have a small holding of their own, and they’ll produce a variety of different things – we’ll buy from them whenever we can. As for produce from local farmers, we’ve made a real feature of telling our guests about it, but it’s always been a natural part of the way we’ve operated the hotel – as very community focused and about keeping the money where we can within Nevis. It makes sense for us financially, but it also makes sense for us in lots of other ways. We’ve always been focused on that. I think we’re getting better at just telling our guests about it. What we’d like to do is try and expand the programme a bit more regionally, so we can source a lot of our ingredients from the region. Our executive chef and probably one of our purchasing managers are going to head down to Dominica in the autumn, to see if we can set up a more effective supply line that works for the resort out of Dominica, and work with the farmers there. So while we source a lot locally, we’d like to source a lot regionally, and that’s sort of an expansion of the farm-to-table that we’d really like to get going there.

What is the progress of the Four Seasons in Clearwater Bay, Barbados?

The developer is still finalizing some of the financing, and I think they’ve made a lot of progress. They’re very active in that regard, and it’s certainly a tough time to get financing for hotels in general. But for resorts in the Caribbean, it’s probably one of the more difficult regions to get financing sorted out. But they’re very confident they can make progress and they’ve already done some in the last three to four months. It’s still a question of finalizing the financing, but they’re moving ahead on some of the design aspects of it, which is a great thing, and hopefully we can begin really actively working on that in the next year.

More tourism ministers are looking to Latin America. Is that an area the Four Seasons is considering?

I’ll be honest, it’s not a market we’ve spent a lot of time working on. Four Seasons, as a company, as a brand, does quite a bit of work there. We, as an individual hotel, haven’t done much work in South America. I think it’s a question of limited resources – how much ground you can cover. As a brand, we’ve begun to try and be very active in the market. But as a specific hotel, we haven’t been really able to develop any momentum in that market. We have been reaching out to both CARICOM and our next door neighbours. There’s a lot of interest out of Puerto Rico, which is great for Nevis. We’ve developed some secondary markets since we reopened, particularly the Italian market, and that’s proved very successful, considering we’ve only done it recently.

Can you talk about the Italian market?

It’s an interesting market. Because it has more than a couple of positive benefits of being successful there. Number one is, it tends to be a summer-oriented market. They travel in the summer and, particularly in July and August, that’s their main holiday time. So that dovetails well with a lot of our quiet periods, and the region in general. Secondly, they’re not too averse to long haul travel – they’re quite adventurous in many ways, and a long-haul summer vacation is something they actively consider. Thirdly, they tend to be quite hotel-focused. When they come and stay in a particular resort, they tend to spend most of their time in the resort. It’s a long flight time for them – very much a long-haul destination – but one that they seem to be very interested in.

For more of Caribbean Journal’s Country in Focus feature on Nevis this month, click here