Luxury hotel group Jumeirah would be contractually tied to Bermuda for 20 years with an option to extend their operating contract for the proposed Southlands resort until at least the middle of the century if the scheme is approved and built.

The hotel group is only 10 years old but has quickly established itself at the very top end of the market through its iconic establishments such as the sail-like tower hotel Burj al-Arab in Dubai, which is referred to as “the world’s only seven-star hotel”.

Craig Christensen is one of the owners of Southlands Limited, which has formed a partnership with Jumeirah to bring an ambitious resort hotel and fractional ownership vacation units to the sprawling Southlands estate in Warwick.

Providing the scheme is granted a special development order it is anticipated work to build the two-phase hotel before the end of 2010 will begin immediately.

Mr. Christensen confirmed this week the link up with Jumeirah is secured for 20 years with an extension option for a further 20 years. And he said the prospect of Bermuda entering the five-star hotel market is one that makes good business sense for the Island if it is serious about re-establishing its pre-eminence as a world-leading tourist destination.

Explaining why Jumeirah was picked as the preferred hotel operator above more widely known luxury chains, he said: “We interviewed other five-star operators and felt Jumeirah fit best. We did not want it to be another major chain hotel where you get the feeling of ‘much the same’ when you visit. Jumeirah’s slogan is ‘stay different’.

“If you look at all their iconic hotels they are different. They look at this (Southlands) in terms of branching into the Americas. They are expanding and want to have 60 hotels by 2011. This is helping to put them on the market in the US.”

What has emerged as a key element of the Jumeirah Southlands scheme is the inclusion of fractional vacation ownership units, which make up 50 percent of all the accommodation units projected for the 311-suite resort.

Why so many fractionals?

“It was always part of the plan. I would say that virtually every hotel property that is being developed, because of the high costs of actually constructing those operations, all look towards some form of fractional or whole ownership units in order to help defray the actual capital costs of putting up a resort,” said Mr. Christensen.

The hotel will have seafront restaurants and apartments and a further main building set back on the northern side of South Road. South Road is to be realigned and directed beneath a land bridge to allow the resort to have unbroken, sloping grounds from the uppermost slopes of the woodland reserve hinterland to the beach.

Later this month the Southlands team will be travelling to Dubai to meet with Jumeirah and key designers responsible for its iconic hotels in the Middle-East to work on the final designs for the proposed hotel.

Mr. Christensen said: “We are going back to sit down with them and have another go-through with the technical services and internal designs and look at the things that they do brilliantly. These are the people who helped design the Burj al Arab — those are the individuals who are sitting down with us and looking at how we are designing this resort and the feel of this property. They want it to be an iconic property like the rest of the group.”

As for the construction, it is envisaged that hired expertise from off-Island will be needed.

“No-one has constructed a project of this magnitude since the Fairmont Southampton, so we are going to need expertise. We have hired expertise already for guidance as to how to construct it. We have contacted the management of a major hotel construction company although we will not ask them to build it but we have used their brains as to how to put it together.”

Luxury hotels at the high-end of the market is a growing market trend, said Mr. Christensen.

“The demand in the luxury market has grown significantly. We did market research and looked at it carefully, when we looked at the 28- to 50-year-olds we see that those are the ones travelling today and spending and looking for pampered service,” he pointed out.

“We do have a product here that will meet that demand. It’s embarrassing to me to look to the Caribbean and see all the hotels popping up in places like Turks and Caicos and St. Lucia. It’s time for us to get on the bandwagon. We were the leaders and now we are the followers. We hope what we can do with Southlands is put Bermuda squarely back on the map as being a leader in the Caribbean and attract more properties like this.”