By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Atlantis lost power supply to its Marina Village yesterday due to a combination of generator challenges and a Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) outage that extended into a second day.

Vaughn Roberts, Atlantis’ executive vice-president of administration and strategic initiatives, told Tribune Business that while most of the Paradise Island mega resort is operational due to its many generators the one that provides stand-by power to its Marina Village attraction also failed.

“We are doing fine,” Mr Roberts said of the resort’s operational status during the second day of BPL’s Paradise Island supply outages. “We have full stand-by generators that support the entire resort. So although we’re in day two of it, we’ve been doing fine.

“We have some challenges with one of the generators that [serves] Marina Village, so we’re trying to work around there. But that just went down earlier today. The rest of the resort is fully operational and there haven’t been any issues. We often have gotten indications that BPL will restore primary power tomorrow [today].

“We have tons of generators, as you can imagine... So we have a bank of generators all across the resort. And the generator that supports Marina Village, we’re having some difficulty, but the rest of the resort is fully operational, and Marina Village was fully operational until some time earlier today. So we’re just trying to reroute another generator to power some of the spaces in Marina Village.” 

Mr Roberts said the lack of power left Marina Village businesses unable to function yesterday, but said most of the customer traffic tracks through the Aquaventure water park during the day. He added that with tourists visiting the Marina Village mostly in the evenings for dinner, they will be directed to other restaurants at the resort.

“The businesses are not operating because there’s no power,” said Mr Roberts. “So they’re closed today. Usually during the day time, the traffic is all on the outside in Aquaventure. In the evening time is when you get more traffic in there [Marina Village] for dinner. So we’re working to try to bring some parts of it up.

“But, if not, it’ll all hopefully be restored when BPL restores its primary power tomorrow. Marina Village, although it’s an important part of the resort, we have lots of other restaurants elsewhere on the resort. Obviously it’s impacting the retail tenants that’s there. But, again, hopefully it’s short lived and power is back tomorrow.

“Marina Village is a very small part of the resort. Everything else is operational, so we haven’t had any tourist complaints. We’ll have to see what happens this evening when people go out. But we’re going to reroute them and redirect them to other restaurants and other retail areas as well.”

Kim Smith, owner of The Village Grocery Store located on Paradise Island, added that she was tasked with having to explain the outage to concerned customers. She said she was able to reassure them that the generator would kick-in.

Ms Smith said she has learned to be prepared for power outages, and has switched to credit card machines that do not require the Internet to ensure trade continues to flow. “Because, you know, the power is so unreliable, you now switch and think about everything when it comes to doing business,” Ms Smith said. “So even down to our credit card machines we’ve turned to the bank.

“They’ve got some new machines where you can operate with a SIM card. Once the power goes off, the Internet usually kicks out or sometimes goes out. The last time it was the whole transformer for the Internet. So we didn’t even have any Internet. So we just prepared. Now we changed out all our credit card machines for their SIM card machine.

“So they go with SIM card so, even if we don’t have any Internet, they still operate. You want to just think about everything now. Ninety percent of our business is credit card, believe it or not. I tell people it’s changed over the years from more cash to less credit cards. But now, especially with tourists, most of them just want to use the card. This is just May. I hope this is not a prelude to what the summer is going to be.”

The outage, which occurred on Monday afternoon, affected some portions of Paradise Island due to a fault on one of BPL’s main underground cables. Power restoration occurred at Britannia Shores, Casino Drive, the RIU Hotel, the Grand Hotel and convention centre first.

However, due to a second fault that was found, the areas of Comfort Suites, Ocean Club Resorts, Paradise Estates, Harbour Cove, Cloister Drive and Ocean Club are not expected to receive BPL power until this morning.