At Long Last, A Small Portion of the Baha Mar Resort Opens in Nassau

Update 4/24/17: The Grand Hyatt Baha Mar is currently pricing at 15,000 points on Hyatt's website (although it's now listed as a Category 5 hotel), and according to Mommy Points the property is honoring those reservations. If you're planning a stay be sure to book as soon as possible to lock in the lower rate!

Baha Mar, an enormous 1,000-acre Bahamas development that's been $4.2 billion and more than 10 years in the making, is finally opening its doors — well, sort of.

To call the Nassau resort complex massive would be an understatement, as the finished product, which sits along a half-mile stretch of sand between Downtown Nassau and Cable Beach, will house three properties with a combined total of 2,300 rooms, 42 restaurants and lounges, 11 swimming pools, a 100,000-square-foot casino, 30 luxury shops and an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course and Golf Club.

The largest and most affordable of its three hotels, Grand Hyatt, is the first to open — there's a soft opening this week, while the general public will be able to book rooms starting in May — and will feature 1,800 rooms, with prices starting around $350 a night. The property is currently listed on the World of Hyatt website as a Category 4 hotel, but multiple Hyatt phone representatives told us the hotel is actually a Category 5, which means rooms will cost 20,000 World of Hyatt points per night for a standard guest room.

The other two hotels — SLS, with 300 rooms and prices hovering around the $500 per night mark and Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, with 200 rooms and prices starting at $700 per night — will open later this year and next spring, respectively. The resort's many amenities are set to open between now and this time next year. Today, for instance, guests were able to visit the casino, golf course, seven of the 11 swimming pools, portions of the spa, and several shops and restaurants.

While luxury mega-resorts are not a rarity, it's not often that they take this long to open. Plans for the project were announced in 2005, with construction not officially starting until 2011. The complex, originally scheduled to open in May of 2015, filed for bankruptcy in early-2016 after experiencing issues with missed deadlines and other delays. Baha Mar was eventually purchased in November 2016 by Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, and things seem to be going according to plan — finally. Hopefully, guests will find Baha Mar was worth the wait.

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H/T: The New York Times

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