Caribbean Music Festival
Junkanoo Carnival
Fyre Festival

3 Straight

I sent a letter to the MOT two weeks ago letting them know this concert was somewhere between ridiculously over-ambitious and an outright scam. MOT has now released a statement saying nothing is their fault. Seriously. This is going to turn in to another Anna Nicole 'infamy' for this country and all I can think is that everyone at MOT probably got well greased to permit this debacle

I was surprised when they admitted to knowing about it and giving advice. If permits were required, there should have been some due diligence to verify booked guests against suitable accommodations.

Only people who have actually lived in the out islands extensively or currently live there and understand the logistical problems and nightmares with such events and adventures should be allowed to organize these kinds of events. You never see large village held parties and events go this horribly bad, Even when the weather is terrible they always are carried out smoothly and everyone leaves satisfied and happy. This was an easily predictable outcome given the promotion involved. The promotion itself was a red flag that this would not end well.

Absolutely!

"*Hundreds of visitors to Exuma were met with total disorganization and chaos.*"

Hmmm I wonder if they got more tourists than Junkanoo carnival...I say if someone were willing to..... these are people who were set for a week's vacation in the Bahamas, there's a festival in Freeport tonight and one in Nassau next week....

a sucker is born every minute

Typical screw-up!!

Meanwile, the annual Eleuthera jazz festival came off without a hitch a few weeks ago -- because those people actually know what they're doing. It's not some half-baked scam run by phony celebrities.

Big difference because the necessary infrastructure is already here. However based on last years accounting the expenses to host this event were totally disproportionate to the small profit made and donated to the library.

Wasn't this event supposed to be next week? How did it come to clash with the Exuma Regatta and cause chaos with travel, hotel bookings, ground transportation and everything else? A good opportunity gone bad. Hopefully it will be re scheduled

Two separate long weekends, this week and next. Supposedly.

...the attendees will not be coming back. There will be no confidence in returning.

What did this cost The Bahamas?
Bad publicity seems the least of worries.
Planning is not one of our strong points.
Ever watch the country when a hurricane is 24 hours out.

Now they need to clean up their junk and head home to re-think/re-plan.

This debacle hopped thru a few different islands before arriving in Georgetown.
Just the Garbage alone would be a logistical nightmare.
Meanwhile I understand those "disaster relief" tents are indeed and are owned by NEMA.
Follow the money honey! We've time for a few more pre-election scams!

Did the US visitors come looking for fire?????? ....... Just follow the FNM rally schedule ....... BOL

Biggest blame is the local Exuma contact scammer who saw an opportunity to make some money and had no clue what he was doing.

I would say the blame is all with the organizers. The guests didn't trust this "local exuma contact" with their money. Due diligence

This is all over the Daily Mail website as well as RT.com out of Russia. How's that for worldwide publicity?

and the attendees said they 'will throw an epic party anyway', the garbage and sewage will also be epic.

$12,000.00 to come to such an event. P.T. Barnum said a sucker is born everyday. He was right.
Piss poor organizing, and lack of government concern for visitors who were duped.
Great publicity for Exuma and all of the Bahamas.

Once a month the Bahamas makes international headlines for all the wrong reasons.

There should be a full investigation in to this immediately. If no due diligence was done, government officials responsible for reviewing event applications, such as these needs to be held accountable. Consistently the Bahamas looks horrendous worldwide.

First the Baha Mar debacle now this...? Foreign investors are not going to consider the Bahamas, as we are corrupt, have poor service, and are consistently disappointing paying customers for numerous things. The ease of doing business is at an all-time low.

Quite honestly at this point, I am surprised people are not running for the hills!!!

Please God any other party but the PLP on May 10th.

The Ministry of Tourism has a large part of the blame as they full well know that during the Exuma Regatta all accommodation is taken and all flights including charters full.

Like the plp - they suck cockroach balls.

This came across the Bloomberg screen as well. Every investment professional in the world will see this story. (Bloomberg picked it off Reuters).

Your right! It was on the Today Show NBC this morning. Showed the whole disaster down to the dinner box with salad, bread and cheese. They told the high cost the tourists had paid. They showed tents for housing and the to go box with the bread, salad and cheese. It was aired in United States on a Saturday morning when most of us are home. Not good publicity.

I have seen this story across multiple international news sources, which is not at all surprising for a failure of this magnitude and in the era of social media. Nowhere is the Bahamas being blamed for this debacle. While we can all agree that the MOT proved inept in just trusting that everything was in place as advised by the organizers, it was still a private event that was grossly mishandled by the investors themselves. The MOT could have confirmed with other gov agencies that the information provided to them was correct and they could even have made a site visit. The article below actually corresponds with the MOT's claim that they were contacted just recently, since that is exactly what they did to the author of the article. Apparently they fired anyone who told them that it was not plausible to hold the event given the time frame. They outright rejected someone's proposal that they postpone it to next year, with one guy saying "let's be legends man."

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-fe…

Who approved it for regatta week ? ., Dam looking at the site for the last two weeks ,and who and what equipment was contracted a blind man could of told you this was a disaster .People from local government ,some who had contracts , on up to the MOT who have a fully staffed office on the Island,to enviromental health , to the MP that was on site days before should of been saying ,,NO WAY ,NO HOW ,,and pulled the plug ..

Apparently the festival attendees made it to Exuma just fine. If the island (Norman's Cay?) was prepared as the investors envisioned, both events could have been pulled off successfully. From the perspective of not verifying information, the MOT was definitely wrong. No matter how much percentage of the blame can be assigned elsewhere, the investors were repeatedly warned that they were being too ambitious and still they moved forward. Ultimately, the blame falls on them.

I watched this unfold for the last month ,,Somebody should of pulled the permit a week ago ..and we approved it for regatta week ,,I saw who was getting a contract and turning a blind eye ,,there is blame for everyone ,,but the promoters are not responsible for our "Brand " we are,,,,, and for a couple dollars to a couple well connected cronies we dropped the ball

While you and others on here want to hold the MOT equally or more responsible for this failure, that is not the message being conveyed by the media. I don't doubt there was some paying off and looking the other way involved, but it was not Bahamas FyreFestival. It was Ja Rule's FyreFestival named after his existing business enterprise and tied to his celebrity image, which is why he is catching the heat more than anyone.

So what, we are an ass of a nation and we reap what we sew.

Is anyone really surprised?

To pull this off, the first step would have been to eliminate all Bahamian involvement/ dependancy on Bahamians ,then bring full staff and all infrastructure from the states.

We all lnow that we cant do anything here with our people.

We also know, that there is no extra anything on any of our islands, each island, just barely able to function at the pathetic level of existance that we call normal.

Its only better in the Bahamas , if better, is living with everything substandard and 50 years behind the times.

Notice that even our latest great achievement (bahamar) is mostly being done by everyone but us. Notice we dont run it. Notice all the cruise lines run their own islands. Notice the airport is run by canadians. Notice all banks and large companies are run by foreigners. Notice that anything that works here is run by non Bahamians.

We can all sit here and lie to ourselves and put blame on the party company, as if we could have done better. But the reality, is that theyre mistake was to believe in our people and our places. A fools mistake yes, but being honest, that means its on us.

How come we are so useless as a people and a nation. Im tired of being ashamed of our people and our country.

All we have is false pride. Sadly we have so much false pride that we refuse to see what a crap nation and people we really are.

There is so much work to be done in our nation, and yet our people cant get past the whats in it for me attitude, and out people refuse to do the work to fix it.
We all want to be paid well, with our disgusting entitled attitude, yet we are generally useless lazy and stupid.
We are not a nation of hard working highly skilled people, but rather an arrogant bunch of lazy dummies who demand to earn more than the truly skilled and hard working people of the real developed world.
Other than the rare athelete , and a few other exceptional people, we have none who should walk and carty such pride. show me a bahamian with pride and i'll show u a deluded individual ( with few exceptions i admit).