Bar­ba­dos' Al­mond Beach Vil­lage will close April 30 amidst "the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing qual­i­ty of the prod­uct," ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by Ralph Tay­lor, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Al­mond Re­sorts. Ac­cord­ing to Ger­vase Warn­er, Neal and Massy Hold­ings, Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Al­mond was buck­ling un­der more than US$51 mil­lion in ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debt with US$40.7$80 mil­lion in bad debt and US$12.7 mil­lion in re­lat­ed par­ty debt.

Warn­er ap­plaud­ed the ex-em­ploy­ees' of­fer to cut their salaries, but said he would be "re­miss" to al­low em­ploy­ee to make that sac­ri­fice and in any event "would not be suf­fi­cient for the mag­ni­tude of in­vest­ment re­quired." Fol­low­ing the clos­ing, guests cur­rent­ly booked at the 395-room re­sort will be re­lo­cat­ed to Al­mond Beach Club and/or Al­mond Ca­sua­r­i­na Beach, both on Bar­ba­dos.

About 1,000 work­ers at the all-in­clu­sive prop­er­ty had re­cent­ly tak­en vol­un­tary salary cuts with­in the past month in an ef­fort to save the trou­bled re­sort, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal me­dia re­ports. Warn­er told the Bar­ba­dos me­dia that the fi­nan­cial trou­bles fac­ing the group of three ho­tels were just too mam­moth for the em­ploy­ees to solve.

Caribbean­News­Dig­i­tal