The locally-owned Anguilla Great House, which lost its galvanize roofing to Hurricane Irma in September 2017, is off to a good restart. Three of the unique Caribbean architecture-styled villas, providing fifteen upgraded guestrooms, are back in operation and the refurbishing of the rest of the villas, accounting for almost the same number of rooms, is well underway.
General Manager of the property on the historic Rendezvous Beach, Mr. Wilbert Fleming, speaking on behalf of his father, Mr. Conrad Walton Fleming, reported on the progress of the hotel. “We still have a long way to go but we were able to open three of the villas on December 15, and some last-minute touches are being applied to the other villas,” he stated. “We are hoping to resume cooking at the Beach Bar in the coming days thus making it easier to deliver food to our guests. After that we will spend about a week refurbishing the kitchen at the main restaurant and, as you can see, we are having a banquet at the restaurant tonight (Saturday, December 29) catering for some hundred guests.”
Asked what the main challenges to restore the hotel were, he said financing and the availability of materials. “Because of the way my father was able to manage the money we probably got three times as much out of the funds, we would normally get, if we had hired a contractor,” he observed.
“My father was able to do a lot of the work himself, and to control the flow of the funds especially in terms of the materials. We also had to replace all the hurricane damaged furnishings in the rooms at great cost. We had to be smart about not spending all the money on the whole property at one time – and then to find that it was not possible for us to open and operate it. That’s why we undertook to complete it in phases starting with the three villas, and were able to have a soft opening on December 15.”
The reopening of the hotel has been greeted by a number of guests, mainly repeat visitors. Many of them had relaxed on their accustomed scenic Rendezvous Bay even while the Great House was in ruins or was being refurbished after Hurricane Irma.
“Wil”, as the General Manager is popularly called, spoke about the upgrading of the rooms: “We did some upgrades to the rooms and were able to add 40-inch flat TV screens mounted on the walls and internet kin all the rooms. We have upgraded all our beds and linens. We have created private porches or balconies for all of our guests. We will be having basically two restaurants on property. The Beach Bar will be upgraded as a restaurant for breakfast and lunch and the main restaurant will be mainly for dinner – and if we have large groups we will do breakfast there as well. We have a brand new front office building. It will have a boutique and we are hoping to have that going by early January – and that will be something new for us.”
He continued: “We are also reaching out to day trippers from St. Martin/St. Maarten so that we can have more lunches and keep the beach busier. We are expecting to see an increase in business this year. I can tell you the bookings for January, February and March are already up so we are rushing to finish the other villas for that period. Surprisingly, there are demands for April, May and June. People are just trying to find flights now and to confirm their reservations. We have a lot of enquiries and I hope that is representative of the entire island with Anguilla very busy over the summer. We are looking forward to seeing Anguilla getting busy and to be part of it.”
Wil’s father, Mr. Fleming Sr., is the main shareholder of the Anguilla Great House. He is a noted builder, former surveyor, owner of the Anguilla Trading Company (with branches at Lower South Hill and The Valley) and a prominent Methodist. While he left most of the talking to his son about the property, he commented: “It was not easy, but thank God we reached as far as we could. I didn’t know we would have reached this far but with God’s help, and a few dedicated people around me, we made it this far. We still have a long way to go, but I phased the refurbishing work by finishing the first three villas of fifteen rooms. There are a next twelve or so rooms to complete but this will hopefully be completed very soon.”
If there is one other thing that the Anguilla Great House is hoping to consider, it is to have some monuments or other symbols on its premises to commemorate two points of history at Rendezvous Bay. One is that it was an Amerindian settlement where several artifacts were found during the construction of the hotel. The other is that it was the landing site of a brutal French invasion force on Anguilla in 1796 but which, after causing much havoc on the island, was eventually repelled at Sandy Hill by brave Anguillians assisted by the arrival of HMS Lapwing.
