By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Harbour Island resorts yesterday said they are “trying to control the narrative as best as possible with our guests” after the popular tourism destination was hit by more power outages.

Henry Rolle, managing partner of The Rock House, said Bahamas Power & Light’s woes have become progressively worse since “at least since May”, resulting in one of the resort’s generators going out of service.

“It’s bad,” Mr Rolle said. “It’s very bad. We’re lucky we have a generator. But the thing is, we actually had two. The first one got blown because of the issues. The thing is the power plant here, depending on the time of day, the voltage is never even on the island.

“So our property received high voltage and low voltage. So it would fluctuate between at least five times a minute. And then there was this big surge that came through that just blew out our alternator for the main generator. That’s the generator, plus the transfer switch, plus the labour. That was about a $50,000 expense.”

Mr Rolle said he was also given a number and an e-mail to report the damage but added: “Honestly, in terms of what they’re offering, it doesn’t come close to helping.”

Lee Prosenjak, Valentine’s Resort and Marina’s managing director, said: “I won’t hold my breath until I get reimbursed” regarding two bar refrigerators the resort has lost due to the outages and brown-outs. He said he is currently keeping refreshments cool with the use of coolers.

“There’s a form to fill out when stuff happens that they give us a link to,” Mr Prosenjak said. “But I won’t hold my breath until I get reimbursed. The refrigeration equipment itself is $6,000; well, each of them. So it’s about $10,000 worth of equipment. And then, of course, we pay duty and shipping and VAT on top of all those to bring them over.

“It would be under a warranty if it were in the US, but they have to send somebody to look at it and all that sort of stuff. I just have to reorder the equipment. That’s the cheapest. Best way to go is to reorder brand new equipment to make that be the case. And it’s not something, of course, that you just go run down to Pigly Wigly and go get a few more. It’s a major order. It takes me three weeks to get stuff in. And I just paid for this. 

“It would be awesome if the Government systems worked well together, and we could say: ‘Hey, this was caused by BPL. Can you waive duty and VAT on the next one that I have to replace.’ It’s been 60 days or something like that since I’ve had these bar refrigerators in so that would be awesome. Or a way to make that back, because otherwise I got to pay again the VAT, the duty. I have to eat the shipping either way. But it’d be great if I could get compensation for that, too.”

Mr Rolle said that with BPL outages come water woes and Internet interruptions. He said hotels that did have generators had to take guests from those that did not. The Rock House “have a huge stake” in the success of Harbour Island and have had to explain the outages away to tourists. 

“We’ve been trying to control the narrative as best as possible with our guests, obviously, because we have a huge stake in Harbour Island being successful,” Mr Rolle said. “In terms of the guests coming in, I mean, obviously we would love to vent to them, but all of the hotel operators are the same where we sort of try to brush it off and just let them know that this is something that happens when it’s summer, so on, so forth. Again, just to control the narrative.”

Mr Prosenjak added: “That’s the hard part because the tourists, they don’t know the struggles that we go through all the time with water and electricity and, thankfully, at the hotel, we have the back-up systems in place to just kind of kick right over.

“So if they’re in their room during the day and they noticed that there was a 30-second power outage, all they see is the clock on the stove top resets to 12 o’clock. They don’t really realise the damage on the infrastructure, or what it takes to keep that downtime to 30 seconds while our generator is firing up and ready to kick on. 

“And the personnel, I now need to keep somebody around later in the evening just in case there’s a power outage, and we want to make sure that everything turns on and it comes back up to speed normal. So, I don’t think they really notice. And the bulk of our client base comes from the US, and they’re used to having 100 percent uptime power. So it’s a rarity when they would have a power outage at their house because there’s ample supply for everybody. And no one’s competing over the same kilowatt hours,” he added.

“We should note that BPL has been very proactive with their communication during all of this in the Whats App groups. It’s nice to at least know what is going on and have someone respond with even an educated guess as to when power may be restored. The other night we had to stay on generator for about 14 hours through the night. Being told that would be the case was helpful.”