Simple, sensible question -- How will Baha Mar open on April 21 if it is not even doing any marketing or taking reservations yet? Christie must be smoking some good ganja, or just delusional. Mark the date -- April 21 will be his final humiliation.

What about the people who had already been hired and trained, many of them leaving existing jobs at places like Atlantis to roll the dice on Baha Mar, only to be laid off? Since they were already trained, wouldn't it make more sense, and be more fair, to try to rehire them first?

Every time I think the Baha Mar saga cannot become any more ridiculous, it does. This project -- and its bungling by everyone concerned, including Izmirlian, his management team, the Chinese, the Bahamian government and the receivers -- will go down as a textbook example of how NOT to create a successful resort. How anyone could be insane enough to believe any qualified bidder would submit to this -- and you can count on one hand the number of entities in the world capable to taking over Baha Mar and actually opening and operating it (and at least two of them have already passed on it) -- is beyond comprehension.

Oh no, I saw all that when it was reported... what amazes me about the saga of BM is that everybody screwed up -- Izmirlian, his "management team," the Bahamian government and China. All I know from direct personal experience is that for both of my Hotel News Now articles reporting cancelled openings -- the first last in August 2014 and the second one a year ago -- is that Baha Mar and their PR person and PR firm (in Miami) lied to me and tried to kill my stories as "made up" and inaccurate. That should tell you a lot. But there's no doubt that China is a big part of the problem and that the Christie regime's ongoing love affair with China has played a big part in the disaster. I assume voters will hold him accountable when the time comes.

Will do... thanks. And I cannot stress enough that I HOPE I and the others who think BM is dead are WRONG. I have been coming to the Bahamas for 35 years, both as a professional travel writer and vacationer, and I love the Bahamas and the Bahamian people. What I care about most is seeing those 2,000 lost jobs saved. Thanks again for your response. We'll all see what happens...

In essence, I agree with you. I also wrote extensively at the time (2008-09) about the gigantic City Center project in Las Vegas, which almost went under and almost bankrupted MGM Resorts, which operates multiple major casino hotels in Las Vegas and elsewhere in the U.S. and world (including Macau in China). The difference is, Izmirlian is not MGM Resorts. I talked just yesterday with several hotel experts (to discuss the Tribune story) and also the Editor of a major U.S. hotel business publication. And they agreed unanimously that it is increasingly unlikely Baha Mar will be sold -- and open. The reasons are complex and not easy to explain in three sentences. But what it really comes down to is the fact that the project, from the start, was too big and too expensive to operate for today's resort market. It made sense 12 or so years ago when Izmirlian started, but no longer. Whether you agree or not, that is the consensus of hotel experts in the U.S. And I know many of them from my work. And for the record, I have no animosity for Baha Mar. My interest is in the Bahamian people and your economy. Baha Mar was supposed to be a good thing for the Bahamas. Now it stands as a disaster. I just hope that changes. And if I turn out to be wrong, I will be the first to admit that. But I make my living by assessing and reporting facts, regardless of what industry I'm reporting on. Thanks.

Since you want to prove publicly you're an idiot, here are just a few random samples. The first one is from The Conference Board Review, a global business journal published for senior executives of the Fortune 1000. The rest are pretty self-explanatory, including my now infamous Baha Mar story from a year ago. Care to apologize?

http://www.tcbreview.com/tcbr-leadershi…

My Baha Mar scoop that shut it down two hours after publication:
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/25…

Another major scoop that got picked up by major U.S. news network and debated in Congress:
http://forward.msci.org/mission-impossi…

reuters (byline at the bottom): http://www.reuters.com/article/us-finan…

http://www.ceotraveler.com/destinations…

For the record, I've been a journalist for 45 years. My first job was on The Hudson Dispatch in Union, City, NJ. My work has been published in more than 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and around the world.
Proud of yourself for being such a fool?

I didn't "cut and paste" anything. I read this article today and posted a response. On the other hand, the situation hasn't really changed that much since I wrote my Hotel News Now story and it was published a year aqo day after tomorrow -- and two hours later, Baha Mar shut down. Two months later, Izmirlian filed for bankruptcy. The rest is history...

My interest is purely journalistic. And the Tribune is a newspaper. I have no personal interest in what happens to Baha Mar, one way or the other. Like anyone else, I have a right to state my opinion. And the opinion I stated here is based primarily on facts. You, too, can think whatever you want. We'll all see in the end how it turns out. But perhaps if Baha Mar does not get sold and open, you'll have the integrity to admit you were wrong. And if it does, I will happily do the same.

I am the U.S. journalist who got the scoop for Hotel News Now on March 24, 2015 that the alleged "opening" of Baha Mar supposedly scheduled for the next day was a scam, a fraud -- by Izmirlian and his "management team," including his PR team, who blatantly lied to me and many other reporters. This "news" from the receivers is absurd. You have to be insane to think a reputable, smart buyer can be found for a multi-billion project that is incomplete, rotting away by the day in the sun, tied up in litigation in the UK, and with a financier who wants to be "made whole." I have tried to keep an open mind about Baha Mar and hope for the best for the people of the Bahamas, but at this point -- as an expert on the project and the hotel industry -- I predict Baha Mar will never open. I say that largely because if Sol Kerzner could not make a deal -- when he clearly wanted to -- nor could any of the other players who looked at it, no one can. It's dead. Instead of being too big to fail, it's too big (and expensive) to succeed. Sad, but true.