New Sam Lords Castle Resort – Major Investment Boost for Barbados

When the Wyndham Sam Lord’s Castle Resort opens its doors later in 2019, the largest hotel real estate investment in the island’s history, will provide employment for at least 1,000 Barbadians and deliver a major new tourism and real estate investment stream for the island.

Acting General Manager of Sam Lord’s Castle Development Project, Michael Phillips, told a news conference that the configuration of the US$200 million resort has been informed by research which suggests that tourism is in the middle of an ongoing psychographic shift from the self-indulgence and conspicuous consumption of the 90s, to a consumerism reflecting present day societal values.

“Based on this, we have designed a product which represents a package of features and programmes aimed not only at creating high levels of patronage, but also high levels of guest emotional attachment to the resort.

“This is particularly important as research shows that guests who are fully engaged are less sensitive to price because their emotional connection with the brand moderates their concerns about cost.,” he said, noting that the redeveloped hotel would consist of 450 suites, a flexible meeting space and a large spa.

On 20 October 2010 Sam Lord’s Castle was gutted by a major fire.

Wyndham’s Vice President of Operations for Latin America and the Caribbean, Eduardo Cruz Del Rio described the hotel under construction as a “game changer”, not only for the Caribbean, but worldwide. He said the Wyndham brand was a leader in the hospitality industry and pointed out that it now had about 9,000 hotels in 77 countries.

“In the pipeline, we have over 59,000 new rooms in North America and 138,000 rooms worldwide. Sixty-seven per cent of these are now under construction…,” he disclosed.
He said that in 2016 a new loyalty programme was launched and it was now ranked number one in the world.

“What is important to this is that we have over 50 million members in that programme now and all of these are potential clients for Sam Lord’s Castle,” he said.
The project, funded through the government of China, is expected to open in the latter half of 2019.