4 | Coconut Bay Beach Resort & Spa
concocted by the resort’s leadership, whom
Hawken says was interested in delivering a
product that would set Coconut Bay apart
from other resorts within the tiny island na-
tion that’s home to nearly 175,000 residents,
about 1,500 miles off the U.S. mainland.
“There are many all-inclusive properties
out there, but there’s nobody doing them
both,” Hawken says. “In all the hotels I’ve
worked at in my career, this one is incred-
ibly unique in its marketing efforts and we’re
actually quite successful. It was an element
that the ownership and the CEO designed.
Nobody else was doing it. It was a concerted
effort to differentiate the hotel from others.”
The resort was purchased nine years ago
by its current owner – who has a primary
business in the baking industry – after it was
part of the Club Med franchise for 30 years.
It’s grown only incrementally since that
transition, Hawken says, though plans are in
the works to expand the existing facility in
a series of phases over the next several years.
Thirty-four rooms, in fact, will be added in a
project that started in February and should
be done by early 2015.
The staff has increased by 80 employees
over the last 18 months, in large part due
to a corporate initiative to employ residents
of the southern half of the island, where no
