Atlantis carried out their phase one reopening Thursday morning as a long line of executives stood socially distanced in front of the sign-in area welcoming back hundreds of employees. Senior Vice President of Atlantis Bahamas, Karen Carey says that after being closed for almost 9 months this year, it was an exciting day for all of them.
“We are so happy to welcome back twenty-five hundred of our team members, that’s phenomenal for us. So, they are coming into a whole new environment, a lot of work, a lot of protocols a lot of changes, lots of exciting things that are happening.
“But more importantly, it’s just learning to ensure that we are keeping ourselves safe and our team members, their well-being is crucial to us.
Carey says that water parks and restaurants will be open in this first phase and that they are happy to welcome back the culinary team, room attendants, landscapers, engineers, technicians, support teams and other departments.
Covid-19 still stands as a threat to travel and tourism in general. Carey says that with health and safety as a major priority for the Paradise Island hotel and resort, it was mandatory for everyone to attend training to ensure a safe reopening process.
“We’ve been doing a lot of training over the last few weeks to get ready for this so every single member, from the president all the way to our frontline manager and frontline team member has gone through the training.
“We have to build up specific and very strict protocols, unfortunately we can’t hug, and we cannot touch everybody as we used to… we’ve got to be very cautious and careful” Carey said.
Atlantis President Audrey Oswell also attended the re-opening ceremony. She said that they were excited to welcome team members back and to have guests coming in once again.
“We have a lot of demand we have a lot of reservations we see that our guests are staying longer also, which is a great sign” she said.
Oswell explained that although they are happy to see the enthusiasm from guests, they have recently had a problem with airlift.
“We’re hoping that our partners at all the major airlines that service Nassau, Paradise Island will step up and take a risk, just like Atlantis did to be the first major resort to open, to step out and bring airlift from our main feeder markets to help get our guests here” Oswell said
