My 6th sense tells me that all is not well at Six Senses

by S Brian Samuel

For a long time now, I’ve been saying, to the few who would listen, that La Sagesse is not the right location to build a mass-market hotel, let alone two.

The site is on the windy eastern shore, the beach is below average, with brown water and a silty bottom, and La Sagesse is far from anywhere. Sadly, for Grenada, events at Six Senses, opened less than a year ago, appear to be proving me correct.

Recently, I took a stroll along the beach in front of Six Senses, and the still under construction Intercontinental next door. I’ll get to the Intercontinental later, but the first and very noticeable thing at Six Senses is the sand: it’s white! Not the dark grey that La Sagesse is famous for; they’ve obviously brought in a barge or 2 of white sand from Guyana to make the beach look more “tourist-friendly.” The white sand isn’t on the beach itself, where obviously it wouldn’t last long; so, what they’ve created is a “beach-adjacent beach.”

The hotel looked deserted, so I asked a couple of fellas liming on the beach: this place still open? “Yeah man, you can walk in and have a beer at the bar!” Really? So, I did just that, thinking it’s such a relief that Six Senses isn’t an all-inclusive resort, a name that really should be changed to all-exclusive.

This was to be the second time I’d been on the property, back in July I treated my wife and son to dinner at Sea-Fire, one of their restaurants. We were looking forward to the treat, and certainly, the ambience and décor of the restaurant are impressive. But never before, in the history of restaurants, have three people been so disappointed, in a restaurant. I was doubly disappointed, as I paid the bill! I don’t mind paying a lot for good food; I get annoyed paying a lot for so-so food; and I get super-pissed at paying a lot for bad food. Sea-Fire was definitely in the third category — and so said all of us!

I didn’t eat this time (couldn’t afford it!), but I did have a little look around. The resort is very attractive, very elegant — and very empty:

As any half-decent “investigative busybody” would do, I went for a stroll — and even chatted with two rare species at Six Senses: guests! A couple from New York made much the same points as me:

• Nice hotel — but in the wrong place
• If you want absolute peace and quiet, it’s great; but if you want to socialise, it’s not the hotel for you
• The beach is terrible
• It’s too far from anywhere; and
• We won’t be coming back

Any good hotel relies on its repeat guests, both to come back, and to spread the word. Neither of which will be happening at Six Senses. From my simple “eyeball-estimate”, easier to do at lunchtime when most people will be in the restaurant, I’d say that the hotel was no more than 20–30% occupied. Given that this is the “height” of the tourist season, it does not bode well for the future of Six Senses in Grenada.

Which brings me onto an interesting piece of gossip doing the rounds: Are Six Senses leaving? More than one “usually-reliable-birdie” whispered thus into my ear, a story that’s clearly gaining momentum. What isn’t gossip, as confirmed by the staff at La Sagesse Restaurant, is that a few months ago, there was a mass purge of most of the expat managers, who were not replaced. Clear signs of staff with little to do, and a hotel in financial meltdown. I also “heard” that the hotel may be closing in the summer “for renovations.” Renovations? The place isn’t even a year old yet!

Now, this next part gives me no pleasure to say (okay, maybe just a wee bit!): I TOLD YOU SO! On 13 June 2022, amidst the protests after the construction company had destroyed the ecologically vital wetlands (“It was the tractor driver’s fault!”), I wrote in NOW Grenada: “La Sagesse defines the term niche market. Tourists who want something “different” who want to get away from the masses, not go to a mass-market hotel.” You don’t have to look far to see the kind of hotel that’s perfectly suited to the environs of La Sagesse — it’s just down the beach. That’s what the few people who go to La Sagesse want: peace, beauty, seclusion and long walks on the beach.

Note: For the sake of completeness, I reached out to Kemal Shehada of Range Developments to comment on this story but got no reply. Which is not surprising, the developers have done their job: they built the hotel. It’s now someone else’s problem to fill it; Range have moved on, new passports to sell, new empty hotels to build.

I also reached out to the management at Six Senses, informing them of the rumour going around that they are, or soon will be, pulling out of Grenada. A representative, name withheld, had also heard the rumour “among many others” and stressed: Yes, things are tough, as in any new resort; and yes, 6 managers were laid off; but no, we’re not going anywhere! Good to hear.

There you have it: both sides of the rumour. What isn’t a rumour is that the hotel is struggling, massively. I’ve worked in Caribbean hotels; I’ve financed Caribbean hotels (my proudest being the original La Source, developed by my friend Leon Taylor, against massive odds), and I’ve stayed in hundreds of hotels! On the face of it, this resort has all the right ingredients for success: Range is a developer with a proven track record; Six Senses is a world-class brand; and the resort itself is designed and built to a high standard of finish. So why, then, is it struggling?

As anyone who has ever worked in the Caribbean hotel industry will tell you, from the managing director to the bellhop: in this business, you ignore the Golden Rule at your peril: location, location, location! Never was there more of a myth than build it and they’ll come. Tourists are a fickle bunch; you can build the most glamorous hotel in the world, but you can’t make them come. All a resort needs is one, just one, “fatal flaw” and the tourists will stay away in droves — or they’ll come once and, like the couple I spoke with: “Never again.” And what is Six Senses’ fatal flaw? Location, location, location.

So much for Six Senses: struggling but surviving. Right next door, construction of the Intercontinental Hotel grinds on, not exactly at the fastest pace imaginable. At this point, dear reader, you must be scratching your head in puzzlement, wondering: Hang on a second: they’ve just opened one hotel, in this “less-than-perfect” location, and after a year it’s struggling, massively; and they’re building another one? That same bellhop can tell you: does this even make sense? In my same 2022 article: “In such an untested, non-traditional location, wouldn’t a normal investor adopt a more prudent approach, wait until the first hotel was a success, before starting on the second?”

The developers claim that the Intercontinental will be geared towards the conference market, which will shield it from the “locational challenges” of Six Senses. Conference facilities are shown on the right:

This is true — to an extent. Whereas conferences are a major source of business for hotels with such facilities, few hotels, and certainly no Caribbean hotels, can rely on conferences for the major part of their revenue: every hotel needs “regular tourists” to survive. And 150 rooms is relatively small for a conference hotel, most of which are upwards of 300 rooms.

I’ve been to “a few” conferences, too many to remember, and when you’re at some conference, you need to escape sometimes: get away from people wearing name tags! You won’t be doing that at the Intercon, unless you take a long taxi ride, going and coming. If I was organising a conference in the Caribbean, as I’ve done, too many to remember, would I hold it at this hotel. Nope: wrong location!

Before closing, a word to the general contractor at Intercontinental: Grenadians love La Sagesse beach, it is a much-treasured national asset. We know that construction can be messy, but sights like this are, quite frankly, disgusting. You need to do better!

I can’t close without sounding my oft-repeated clarion call: Beware the “benefits” of CBI [Citizen by Investment] — today’s shining star can quickly become tomorrow’s white elephant. We’ve already got one CBI carbuncle, despoiling our breadwinning Grand Anse Beach; is there another one in the making at La Sagesse — or two?

The bigger question is: why do CBI projects have a habit of spawning these half-finished, half-empty hotels? Two words: due diligence. As in, there isn’t any. As we all know, whether individuals or investors: when you go to your bank for a loan, they ask you a million questions, and the more you ask them for, the more they ask you for. As much as we may despise banks, this type of fiscal discipline is actually a good thing because all of us, individuals and investors, tend to suffer from optimism bias — especially when we’re asking for a loan! I’ve never seen a feasibility study that isn’t feasible. The job of the bank is to ask the right questions, the hard questions, to find that fatal flaw, no matter how well hidden.

But CBI doesn’t work that way: the people who “invest” in the hotel aren’t too bothered about its future profitability — they’re buying a passport, anything else is gravy. This is a flawed financing model, and a recipe for the creation of future economic disasters: ill-conceived, poorly located mega-resorts, most of them empty. And who will be left holding the bag? We will.

Wake up, Grenada!