A new rental accommodation business in a historic St George’s building is to target the fun and frugal visitor.

Faith Bridges and her partner Neil Moncriff have taken over the old Block House on Bridge Street built in 1791 and are in the process of renovating it as either a hostel or vacation rentals.

The owners of water sports facility Just Add Water recently bought Aunt Nea’s bed and breakfast and they own other rentals in the Olde Town. They believe that St George’s is calling out for affordable accommodation to attract the many sailors and other interest groups visiting the Island who would prefer to avoid hotel prices.

Ms Bridges told The Royal Gazette: “We have sailors coming through all the time looking for a place to stay for a couple of nights. We want to start shooting at a younger crowd as well we are trying to push St George’s as a beach town and a lively, fun place and in doing that you need to have that sort of price range for those sorts of people to come down and enjoy it. We don’t have that here at the moment.

“Ground isn’t broken on the hotel up here so this season we are looking at 30 beds in St George’s. The lower prices will bring more people to St George’s. Our places were fully booked last summer so we have been looking for properties to fix up — Block House has been sitting there derelict for years and they were selling it. It is going to be great.”

The couple hopes to open the business as a hostel but due to lack of legislation in relation to hostels specifically they are having to liaise with Government officials to confirm permission.

“Our hope was a hostel environment where the rooms are quite small but you have a private room, a shared bathroom, dining room and kitchen. It would be a higher end hostel but still affordable compared to Bermuda prices. We are having to get the minister and relevant people to sign off on that. We have the support of the St George’s Corporation, the mayor, David Dodwell. Everyone is writing us letters saying they support it.

“Either way, we are opening [some form of accommodation] this season.”

If they succeed in opening a hostel, a private room with shared facilities would cost in the range of $50 to $75 a night where as a larger vacation rental split into a four bed apartment to accommodate a family could cost about $300 per night.

The old building, which most recently housed a Belco outpost, is structurally sound but there is a lot of sprucing up to be done. The pair wants to keep the building as true as possible to its historical design.

“Cosmetically there is a lot of work but structurally it is in really good shape. There’s not a lot of substantial work — the whole building has to be scraped back but our main thing is plastering and doing the windows, cracks and painting. It’s not as big of a job as everyone thinks.”

They have already made their first booking for May 26 for the Michael Jarvis Group who come to the Island to do archaeological digs on Smiths Island.