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I'm the president of Windwalker. I own the firm and am the principal there. I have a background in investment banking and real estate advisory, typically on complicated projects. I launched Windwalker three years ago.

Our aim was to identify interesting tourism-related opportunities that focused on a growing market ? the baby boomer market. The oldest baby boomer is now 60 and the youngest is in their early 40s. They're looking at pre-retirement, second homes and vacation. It's tourism. For us, it's understanding what that market needs. Our firm was designed to respond to the needs of sophisticated baby boomers and meet their vacation and travel needs.

: I guess some people like root canals. Real estate projects often need capital. If the project is well-understood and well-financed and sort of ticking along, it's just not interesting to me. For me, the more complicated the better.

A complicated project demands that you get the right people involved. We have Lehman Brothers as a capital partner and then the notion is how do you build the team? The team involves a series of consultants and professionals ? whether they're architects or land planners or attorneys ? working really closely with the community.

The community is political, it's human, it's non-union worker or management. Ultimately, it's the customer. If you don't spend your time talking to your customer that's where these things go wildly off the track.

We need to figure out who the market is and what they want and then work together to deliver something. Because that's the only way you can have a sustainable tourism-related product. Someone asked if I would continue to run a money-losing hotel. No. We can't do that.

: About a month ago. It's complicated because if you talk to anyone about hospitality in Bermuda . . . We had a very open, frank and productive conversation with the Premier (Alex Scott) at one point in this transaction. Lehman Brothers made it clear.

My colleague, Masood Bhatti (vice-president of Lehman Brothers), went to his colleagues on the floor and said: 'Hey I'm looking at something in Bermuda. What do you think?' Every single person said: 'Don't do it'. (Chief executive officer of Marriott hotels) Bill Marriott's famous quote is, 'I've made a lot of money in my life and the only market I couldn't make money on is Bermuda'. When someone says you can't do it, that's what motivates me.

My parents honeymooned at The Reefs. My mother-in-law asked the name of the project I was working on in Bermuda. I explained it was the Wyndham, that it used to be Sonesta. She said she brought my wife, Nicole, to the Sonesta when she was five years old.

(I have a picture of my wife) when she was five, surrounded by these waiters. If you look at their faces, they're delighted to have that picture taken and that's what Bermuda was for a lot of people. There was a certain appropriate formality. There was a very welcoming sense and a very service-oriented sense.

There's nothing that I've seen that doesn't make me believe that that is all achievable again. There's a great, new era for Bermuda. You know what they say about pioneers ? sometimes they get arrows shot in their back. And we're at the front edge of that.

Ultimately, this site can't solve every problem Bermuda has. What we can do is create a new tourism opportunity which will drive employment and will get people coming back and back. Nicole's parents came here. They brought her here when she was young. Last night our sons arrived ? Henry, three-and-a-half, and Charlie, two. Maybe one day they'll come back and some day they'll pull them out of their pocket and say there I was.

: When you think about Bermuda today, there's been this sort of void for the last ten years. I didn't really know much about it but I considered (Wyndham) a new opportunity, a chance to sort of brand Bermuda.

I read an interview with the US Consul General (Gregory Slayton) and he hit the nail right on the head when he said (to succeed), you've got to figure out what you're good at. Bermuda's history is good. It needs to continue to execute at very high service levels.

It's good in terms of its geography ? I took off from New York. The flight was an hour and 32 minutes direct. Especially when you're hauling kids around, you don't want to deal with connections. It's exhausting. Bermuda's access to the Boston / Washington corridor, where there are a significant number of baby boomers, is excellent.

And ultimately, they know when they reach the island, it's safe. Some of the Caribbean islands don't enjoy the levels of safety you have in Bermuda. You've got history, you've got access and you've got an island of incredible natural beauty, why should this not work?

Why should this not be sustainable? Why should we not see a whole new era in Bermuda's hospitality? I think we can. But it's going to take a partnership. Ultimately, you've got to (sit down) with the Union and the Government and the customers and the capital sources and the architects and the planners and figure out how you can make something work.

The Premier made it very clear that he wanted to be a good partner to us and we had some very productive meetings with Government. Are we taking a risk? Yeah, we're taking a risk. Do I think Bermudians get it and they'll make the right decisions for the future of Bermuda? Absolutely. And we're committed to being good partners.

There's an existing special development order which talks about a plan that involves a variety of products. We're looking at that and developing our own team of architects and planners. Ultimately what will this be?

This will be a major tourist opportunity for Bermuda. It will be a modern, resort development and it will require 200-plus million dollars. It won't be just a transient hotel. That's not financeable. You cannot attract capital to an aged idea about what tourism should be.

Bermuda needs to compete with the Caribbean and other locations. What modern resort projects have is a hospitality core, a transient hotel with all the associated amenities ? a spa and restaurants and a whole set of operating activities for children and for adults.

They also have fractional (ownership), an opportunity for a series of people to partner, and buy or participate, in an asset they couldn't alone. People only come for a month or two weeks. They don't need to own something for 12 months. They need time shares. They need fractionals. It only hangs together if all the pieces are in place.

You need a certain level of affluence to (visit) Bermuda. The affluent baby boomer wants a spectacular site. They want safety, they want incredible levels of service and they want a variety of products. They want to be able to visit a hotel for a couple of nights or own a fractional interest because it's a place they want to continue to bring their family.

I have two children. If this is the place we're going to be coming to as a family, I'd like something that feels like home ? a hotel room designed to feel like home, a fractional where I can feel at home, other hospitality units where I can feel like home.

So you need a variety. Affluent baby boomers enjoy having a lot of choices and if they go to the Caribbean, they have all the choices they want there. In Bermuda they don't have a lot of choices. That's why I think if we can create the right choices for those baby boomers and we can deliver extraordinarily high levels of service, you'll have people who come for decades.

There is an enormous market. Baby boomers have a lot of choices. One of the things they demand is a high level of service. If you don't want to provide it that means, to the extent you want to stay in the hospitality business, the hospitality business won't exist.

Because these people will come, they will have a mediocre service experience and they will go somewhere that has excellent service. (Transport and Tourism) Minister (Dr. Ewart) Brown made a very provocative speech to the Union and I think it's important that we keep an open dialogue with them about what's expected.

I've spoken with several people in Bermuda. One of them took the former head of the Union to a very high-service hotel and to show what the Bermuda customer expects ? we may do some some of that. A lot of the responsibility is ours. It's ultimately the responsibility of the owners to set the bar high, to train and to support staff. It's then the staff's responsibility to execute or not.

I come from Nantucket and so I understand islands. It's an incredibly beautiful place. Very different from Bermuda, but just as magical, and you hear the same sort of thing: 'There's not enough to do here'. I think there is a level of amenities which you need to provide. One of the last projects I did with Lehman Brothers was a recreational and social club on Nantucket called the Westmoor Club.

The Westmoor Club has a variety of activities for families. It has an 18,000-square-foot spa and fitness centre. It has an adult pool. It has a children's pool. It has a snack bar. It has a pool house. It has fine dining. It has transient rooms. It has croquet. It has grass tennis. It has clay tennis.

Ultimately what that club did was create an opportunity for people to meet. We have 440 families who have joined us in the last year and we constantly survey them. We try to not heckle, but we want them to know that we listen acutely to what their needs and wants are.

And what they ultimately want is to meet other nice people. It's pretty simple and I think that's true of everyone around the world. A hospitality product like this doesn't just have to be for transients. It can be a part of the Bermuda fabric where people who live in Hamilton or one of the other parishes will come here to meet friends.

It will be a five- or six-star resort. There's a significant opportunity in the market. Minister Brown has given his answer for why there hasn't been significant capital investment in Bermuda. I don't need to comment on that other than to say, there really hasn't.

I haven't been here long enough to know every reason but the reality is, there's no new five or six-star product. And I think if we create that we'll be responding to the needs of those consumers.

Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to see something that you don't see because you're here every day. To an extent you're burdened by, sort of a history. I'm not investing in every hospitality asset in Bermuda.

I'm not making a bet on the entire island in that sense. You pick an industry group . . . I'm looking at CNBC. Right now all the oil stocks are supposedly doing well. There's probably some that aren't doing well. Just because people are concerned about 'the market' doesn't mean that there isn't a niche opportunity.

If I asked you what the five- or six-star hotels are on Bermuda as relative to others (elsewhere), there probably aren't any. So it maybe that the kind of product that exists isn't responding to the market ? it may be. It may not be. I can't solve every issue in Bermuda.

I can't single-handedly resurrect the hospitality industry. I can't rebuild all the rooms that have been lost over 15 years. I just know that we've got 32 acres on a wonderful part of the island, supported by a wonderful staff and a project that's supported by the Government.

If we all work together we're going to create something that I know does not exist and which will respond to the needs of the market. If you respond to the needs of the customer, they will come, they will come back and they will tell their friends and you'll have a successful project.

Right now we're managed by Wyndham. Wyndham, as reported in the press, went through a significant change in ownership at the corporate level. That made it difficult for the hotel last year. I became involved in (this) project in December just as the hotel was closing or had closed. I've since had the opportunity to meet the new Wyndham team.

Yes, the people are new at the corporate level, but they have a real depth of experience ? not necessarily with Wyndham, but with other hospitality firms ? and they're giving significant attention to this asset. Some of the guys have only been here a month. They've got a lot to do and a whole company to rebuild but they've given significant attention to this hotel and they're doing a wonderful job.

So while I care about what happens in New Jersey at the Wyndham headquarters, what I really care about is that we've got a great guy on site.We have a new managing director, Larry Magor, and Larry is that guy.

We couldn't be happier. Employees say there's a real energy here, that the hotel feels alive again, that it feels like we're entering a whole new chapter and that Larry really leads by example. How do you teach people high levels of service? Through leadership. And that's Larry's number one job and he's doing a great job so we couldn't be happier.

What we have here is an incredible piece of land on an incredible island and a hotel which needed to be re-energised, immediately. We think there's a significant opportunity if you hit the market right. What specifically is going to go where and what the product mix is going to be and what's it going to look like, I don't know.

But I think Bermudians are going to be proud of it because we don't want to do anything if they're not. Beyond that we're looking at other products and trying to figure out what is the right five or six-star product for Bermuda.

It will be in keeping with the local environment and will be something that responds to the customer. When they come they want to know that they're in Bermuda. I was in a place (elsewhere) that has very strong, local architecture. I was sitting in the hotel lobby and I didn't know where I was. I could have been in Atlanta, Miami or Cancun.

Minister Brown has been a great partner on this transaction. And Marc Telemaque, as Permanent Secretary, is probably the most responsive public servant at the non-elected level of anyone I've ever met.

They're both very straightforward, very clear and great listeners and as I said when I made my presentation to the Cabinet and when I spoke to the new president of the (Bermuda Industrial) Union Mr. (Chris) Furbert, ours will be an ongoing dialogue. It will be one in the spirit of co-operation. I think that's really important. This project will only work if we get all the pieces to work together.