With the tourism season entering a busy period, Malliouhana an Auberge Resort, which provides a sweeping view of Meads Bay, Anguilla, will reopen on Friday, December 14, joining other properties back in operation.
The coming reopening follows months of refurbishing and expansion in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma which took a toll on the island’s tourism industry in September 2017.
Mr. John Volponi, a veteran hotelier and a US national with thirty years experience, is the new General Manager and Regional Vice President of Malliouhana, an Auberge Resort. He has worked before in Colorado, Mexico and St. Maarten. He joined Auberge Resorts five years ago and oversaw the reopening of the company’s Chileno Bay Resort and Residences in Mexico – and has now been working on reopening Malliouhana in Anguilla. Malliouhana Hotel is owned by Bixby Bridge Capital, an investment group in Chicago, and managed by Auberge Resorts. The group, which purchased the Hotel in April this year, also owns other proper
ties in Anguilla.
Mr. Volponi said that the ownership group had made a real commitment not only to restore all the public areas of the hotel, but had totally revamped all of the employees’ facilities including the locker rooms, employee dining room, the laundry rooms and other areas frequented by them.
The villas on the beach and the former bistro are also being restored. The new beach bar will feature various outdoor games and water sports not only for visiting families and children, but also for other persons on the island.
With its reopening, the hotel will have 46 rooms, and by March the new villas on the beach and a villa at the other end of the property will be added providing a total of 63 rooms. There is also a new conference room and an event deck being built. A new spa, with six treatment rooms and a waiting area looking out to the ocean, is expected to be opened in March. There will also be large fitness and exercise rooms.
Mr. Volponi spoke highly about the employees who have remained faithful to the hotel during its closure. “They are so proud of this property and it comes across in everything they do,” he stated. “They are determined, as anyone, to make sure that we get this hotel open in time – and to see all of them come back with this kind of energy and enthusiasm is very exciting. As we add new rooms, a new beach bar, a new spa and we are fully staffed, we will have about 163 employees -but right now we have about 120.”
The new beach bar will be named Leon’s in honour of Mr. Leon Roydon, former owner of Malliouhana Hotel. The property will have three restaurants. Beautiful fabric colours, featuring the Caribbean, will adorn the hotel and the brightly-coloured uniforms worn by the employees, and their friendly Anguillian hospitality, will help to provide the feeling of a right balance for the guests.
Malliouhana Hotel was originally built in the 1980s by the late Mr. Roydon – and bears the historic Amerindian name of Anguilla.
