First guests for Fisherman's Cove

The first guests arrived at the newly refurbished Fisherman's Cove, last week, as the hotel reopened its doors after an $11million renovation.

The first guests arrive at the new Fisherman's Cove

Closed for refurbishment in August 2003, the Le Meridien Group's Fisherman's Cove is now accepting its first visitors for a month long "soft opening."

With the hotel due to officially reopen on July 1, Le Meridien's Seychelles General Manager, Abel Damergi, said that the soft opening through the month of June would allow for the fine tuning of the hotel's operations.

The multi million dollar over haul has seen major changes carried out throughout the hotel, including an increase in the number of suites from 62 to 70.

Mr Damergi said that the renovation signalled the Le Meridien group's confidence in the Seychelles tourism industry and said that the forthcoming renovation of the hotel chain's other local property, the Barbarons Hotel, is a further sign of their faith in Seychelles.

The Barbaron renovation is slated to begin in October, despite the continued slump in visitor arrival figures.

The Le Meridien G.M. said that the Fisherman's Cove had been renovated to a five star standard while the Barbaron refit would take it to a "four star deluxe" level.

He said that this was designed to prevent the two hotels from being in competition with each other and said that they would target different sectors of the tourist market with the Fisherman's Cove designed for couples and the Barbaron targeting families and group travellers.

Asked about the competition from other up market hotels he said, "All of the five star hotels are competition, but I think that there is a large market for Seychelles. The only thing we need to increase maybe is the number of business class or pearl class seats and I'm sure Air Seychelles is working on that in order to cater for this type of clientele who have the money to pay for it."

Mr Damergi described the Fisherman's Cove as working at 90 percent with all of the hotel's services due to be, "synchronised and operational," by July 1.

Prior to the full opening the hotel will operate with 115 members of staff, a figure which will rise to 150 at times of full occupancy and Mr Damergi was keen to point out that only six percent of the hotel employees are expatriate workers.

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