Page 29 - Club Rockley

like structure with an attractive and very functional canvas roof, made in Yorkshire by the Bradford Cover and Tent Company and personally erected by the owner of the company Hedley Fawcett another magician and, with Vilma, his very special, lovely, late wife, great friends for many years of all at Rockley. On page 14 are some photographs showing the before and after of what was the lovely “Cloud Nine Restaurant” from 1991 to 2003. For almost a dozen years Club Rockley Barbados, prospered and the level of guest satisfaction was extremely high, the guest comments sheets were always extremely complimentary, particularly about the staff and the level of service provided, but also about the excellent evening shows, the Bands and vocalists and the floor show artists. I recall that the lovely Limbo dancer was flown up to London to appear on, “The Paul Daniels Magic Show” on BBC TV, with an audience of some 14 million.
“Club Rockley Barbados”, the all inclusive version of the hotel operation at Rockley (1991 to 2003 had enjoyed an extraordinary start up period, with occupancy regularly averaging well over 90%. However, this was achieved by setting fairly low “off the beach” rates, which called for a break even occupancy of above 70% quite a risky policy but deemed necessary to ‘get it going “! In addition, because we did not own the rooms., and had by now abandoned the former “rental pool” concept we had a fixed monthly rental bill to pay of $100,000. In normal times we had such good occupancy and had built up such a good reputation for value for money as an exceptionally friendly and nice “All-Inclusive’, this was not a problem.
However a world shattering event was to change all that in a flash September 11th 2001 changed everything, for all of us, staff and owners alike.
After the events of September 11th 001 much of our North American business cancelled for the following winter season and for the first time for ten years our occupancy over 2002 fell to below break-even.
At the same time, Barclays Bank Ltd, somewhat astonishingly, sold their entire Caribbean business to a Canadian Bank, who made the decision to withdraw their financial support from Club Rockley (Barbados) Ltd, more or less then and there and the Hotel operation entered receivership at the end of June 00 some  years since its opening.
In the months before that, I had sold Rockley Golf Course to my friend, Ian Dowding, of Dowding Estates and Trading Ltd and straight away
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