By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Royal Caribbean yesterday duelled with a Bahamian entrepreneur over how many foreign construction workers are employed on its Paradise Island project while disclosing that its planned share offering will likely “slip”.

Philip Simon, the cruise line’s top Bahamian executive, told Tribune Business the “timeline has slipped a bit to the 2025 third quarter” for the long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) to local investors as he pushed back against a widely-circulated video of several foreign construction workers at the Royal Beach Club site.

The video, filmed by Toby Smith, who is heading to the London-based Privy Council in his battle with the Government over the Crown Land lease for a site adjacent to the Royal Beach Club, shows several workers identifying themselves as nationals from countries such as Mexico, Indonesia and Haiti. However, Mr Simon hit back with a photo that purports to show a much larger group of Bahamians working at the project site.

Mr Smith, asserting that the cruise line has “built a high wall comparable to [the Great Wall of China]” to mark the boundary between the Royal Beach Club and the Crown Land he is battling for, when contacted by this newspaper asserted: “They have a flock of foreign workers shouting how proud they are to be Mexican, Indonesian, Indian.”

Asking where the Bahamian workers were, he added: “The deputy prime minister [Chester Cooper] is touting the number of arrivals for cruise passengers. However, what he is not sharing with the Bahamian public is the reality. There are 13 island locations owned solely by the cruise lines competing with Nassau.

“Cruise lines no longer stay overnight in Nassau and have killed the Nassau nightlife downtown and where it used to thrive Over-the Hill.... What the cruise lines don’t say is where the money is spent, which foreign-owned businesses are receiving the revenue, what percentage of top-line revenue is going to the cruise lines and what incentives the cruise lines get and export out of the country.”

Mr Simon, though, pledged to Tribune Business that Royal Caribbean will “meet, match and exceed” the promises and commitments made to The Bahamas over the multi-million dollar Royal Beach Club development. And he voiced dismay that Mr Smith had not reached out to him first over his concerns before circulating the video.

“I wish he would come to contact me, like he agreed to do some time ago, if he had any queries, questions or concerns as opposed to standing on the outside looking in and promoting opinions as facts. That’s not the best approach,” Mr Simon, who is president and general manager for both the Royal Beach Club project and Royal Caribbean International Bahamas, said. 

“If he wins his case we’ll be neighbours, and the last time I spoke to him was September 2023. I said we’d be happy to work with him and haven’t personally spoken to him since then. We’re very transparent in everything we’ve done. I always answer the phone whenever it rings from anybody.

“We have put our commitments and obligations on the website. It’s our intent to meet, match them and exceed them. I think it’s a good thing we have employed Bahamian companies to construct our project as promised.” The Bahamian contractors include Island Site Development (ISD), and Mr Simon indicated that any queries over workforce composition and number of Bahamians employed should be addressed to them.

“We have hired only Bahamian companies,” he reiterated. “The companies working on site are Bahamian companies. I don’t think it would be appropriate or even legitimate for me to dictate how they run their businesses as long as they run it in accordance with the law and conform with the policies of the Government of The Bahamas.

“We said we’ll hire Bahamian companies and, when we run into the operations and management, we promised we’d have within our team 100 percent Bahamian employment.” Mr Simon said Royal Caribbean is now trying to complete employment contracts for the Royal Beach Club’s general manager, as well as management posts such as the director of engineering, human resources and finance - all of whom will be Bahamian.

He added that Royal Caribbean last week released “dozens of requests for proposals (RFPs)” for Bahamian companies “to be partners with us and come on board” when the Paradise Island project is completed and ready to become fully operational.

However, Mr Simon said the long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) of equity shares in the Royal Beach Club project to Bahamian investors will likely be delayed slightly due to the need to complete all the necessary regulatory processes.

“We had said the first quarter/second quarter of this year, but I think that’s slipping to the third quarter,” he told Tribune Business. “That’s just the wait time it takes for these matters. They have to run their course to be set up.

“We did sign a supplemental Heads of Agreement with the Government, we have to negotiate the shareholders’ agreement with the Government, and go through the approval process with the Securities Commission. It’s a process. That timeline has slipped a bit into the third quarter.”

The last proposed Royal Beach Club IPO structure was for the cruise line to have a majority 51 percent ownership interest, with the remaining 49 percent equity stake to be split between the Government and Bahamian retail and institutional investors. The size of the Government’s interest was to be based on the value of the four Crown Land acres it was contributing to the project’s total 17 acres.

Once the value of this land was appraised, the size and value of the collective equity raise from Bahamian investors was to be determined. It was thought the IPO would take a similar form to the Nassau Cruise Port offering, where investors acquired shares in an investment/mutual fund that will own the collective local interest in the Royal Beach Club.