By the Caribbean Journal staff
One of the Caribbean’s leading sustainable hotels has officially relaunched in Dominica.
The Jungle Bay Eco Villas has been reborn in Soufriere in southern Dominica, an important step for Dominica’s resurgent tourism industry.
The popular hotel had been shuttered since Tropical Storm Erika in 2015, and has been totally transformed into a new five-star sustainable hotel.
Jungle Bay, now set in the Mourne Acouma village in Soufriere, has relaunched with 30 eco-luxe villas, with eventual plans to open a total of 85 rooms.
The remaining rooms are expected to be open by 2020, according to the property.
Each 800-square-foot villa includes a king bed, a chaise lounge, hand-painted bedding, a “jungle spa” bathroom with a rainshower head, luxury natural body products, large patios and lounges and dramatic views of Dominica’s immense natural beauty.
Amenities at the new hotel include a pair of yoga studios, 14 private spa suites, two yoga studios, a pool, two eateries, wedding and honeymoon facilities and a major focus on sustainability and local-impact tourism.
“We don’t want our people to be bored,” said Jungle Bay owner Sam Raphael. “We want them to get that local food. We want activities, things for them to do, specialty niche activities that they can enjoy.”
Indeed, the hotel has 60 permanent employees, with plans to ultimately create 160 permanent local jobs.
The hotel is the latest new project in Dominica, which has been seeing a full-fledged hotel boom driven by the country’s citizenship by investment program (another top hotel, the Kempinski Dominica, will open in October).
“[Jungle Bay] is a testament to the benefits which we have been deriving from this program,” Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said at the grand opening.
The reopening comes after a soft opening for Jungle Bay at the end of May.
For more, visit Jungle Bay.
— CJ