Elbow Beach Makes Seven Staff Redundant
Seven staff members have been made redundant from the Elbow Beach Hotel, after the resort decided to close their laundry department and outsource the work to the Fairmont Southampton, which a hotel spokesperson explained is standard industry practice for a hotel of their size [98 rooms].
There were eight people working in the laundry department, however Elbow Beach was able to transfer one person internally, and they remain employed by the hotel in a different capacity.
The remaining seven people have been made redundant, with a hotel spokesperson saying each person was spoken to individually and their Human Resources Department is working actively to assist them in finding other employment. The last working day for the seven employees was yesterday [June 11].
This follows after this morning’s newspaper report that US banking giant JP Morgan is to close its private-equity office in Bermuda by the end of this year with the loss of 16 jobs, as well as three jobs being cut at ACE insurance.
Yikes, that’s 26 jobs gone.
In my opinion, the IB model has changed. Years ago, a exempt company operated a fully staffed, stand alone Bermuda outfit. Everyone from finance to IT to admin were employed in the Bermuda office. With technology, your IT needs can be serviced from anywhere in the world, your finance team can be anywhere in the world, your analysts can be anywhere in the world. There is no longer a need to have ‘everyone’ here in Bermuda.
Even local companies have jumped on this trend in the name of efficiency. I call my bank, I get someone in India. I call my cell company, I get someone in Canada.
The old business model has changed and jobs are moving to cheaper destinations. This will definetely push down wages in Bermuda as more people are competiting for jobs.
The tourism model has changed as well. In the ‘hey day’, there was no Internet. You went to a travel agent, or a friend, and they pumped Bermuda. You came, had a good time and returned severl times.
Now with the Internet, you can easily research the entire world. You can compare Bermuda to other places and plan your perfect vacation.
Again, things have changed. We do not adapt to change, all we do is talk.
Hopefully your sensible analysis will dictate the commentary that follows. You are correct, the model(s) have changed and we must change with them. I regret that in ten minutes someone will blame this on…….you know….
Paula told me it was all the fault of the Worldwide Recession. Nothing we can do about it but wait for the good times to begin again.
The Premier said “wait to the good times to begin again ” !!!!! well all I see is Zane and his buddies running this Island !!!!… God have mercy on we Bermudians.
No one ever said it was entirely the PLP’s fault, but they haven’t exactly helped with their anti-foreigner rhetoric and xenophobia and their idiotic legislation nor has their faux socialist tinkering and intervention in the real estate market. They have destroyed the equity that many may have been Hoping they could rely on when times got tough….oh..and they have huge reserves of cash they could use to spend our way out of recession…oh wait..no they haven’t. Why is that?
Incompetent twats who were warned this was going to happen. There isn’t a single one of these morons who could get a job in the real world.
Breathe. The lynchpin of the OBA’s platform will be that this recession is “homegrown” and has nothing to do with worlwide conditions. Bob said and has been saying to anyone who will listen that this is the PLP’s fault. Don’t backtrack now that its becoming clear just how dopey that position is.
Say what you want…defend who you want. The FACT IS that they (IB) have left on the PLPs watch and because of the legislation that the PLP has put in place it made it EASIER and MORE ATTRACTIVE and gave some companies A REASPON TO LOOK ELSEWHERE. Without their rules on permits, long waits at immigration and all sorts of arse backwards run departments they would have focused on business. These companies are not shutting down these departments, they are MOVING THEM. Moving them to countries that are welcoming, appreciative and efficiently and honestly run. Oh, and if they can save a few dollars in the meantime that is just a bonus.
No. The lynchpin is that the PLP has spent money like idiots for years on stupid stuff, all while alienating IB. And now where are we? The money is all gone. Anything we do now is limited by the interest and borrowing costs. And the taxbase is reducing because IB has taken the hint that it is unwelcome. The PLP has painted the country into a corner.
It all could have been so different. The PLP experiment has failed. Miserably.
That’s disingenuous and you know it. Bob never said that, nor did I. No backtracking.
The point Bob has repeatedly made, as have others, is that this was no surprise and the PLP failed miserably to plan for it. In fact, he would be forgiven for saying “i told you this would happen”. And we are now paying the price. Sheer incompetence and corruption.
Bermuda has no resources to fight the downturn and has repeatedly bitten the hand that feeds it. Stupid eh?
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Its that simple. Lack of personal responsibility and constantly making excuses.
* The old business model has changed and jobs are moving to cheaper destinations. This will definetely push down wages in Bermuda as more people are competing for jobs. *
And if that ever happens everything else better start going down and quick.
Not these token decreases we’re seeing in the housing market either . Everything is going to have to go down , big time. Our entire cost structure here was completely unsustainable anyway. Fueled by high taxes due to inefficent government , greedy banks , greedy landlords , greedy service providers and a greedy union .
The faster we get our selves in check the better , but the people who do control the costs better realise that there’s a whole lot of people out there , now unemployed , who still need to survive and they’re in total disbelief when they watch prices climbing daily as if everything’s just normal like it was ‘back then.
ps/ Welcome to the club EBSC staff . I hope you all saved as much as you could while you could !
Give this man a cigar!
@Flikel – well said, you are definetly right! IT is definetly being resourced overseas which means that IT jobs in Bermuda are becoming scarce. We will have to find ways to adapt.
Sign of the times. Bermuda is NOT another world. Read the world papers and watch the world news – Bob Richards has been telling us the world is facing an economic crisis and now we have to believe him. If only he can believe himself and his warnings instead of trying to gain power and make us feel its only Bermuda?
maybe if hotels would lower prices they can increase their amount of filled rooms, surely Elbow Beach is only operating 98 rooms and has far more to utilise
Nope. They closed the main hotel some years ago as it wasn’t worth the cost and effort to refurbish it.
Of course if they lower the rates much more, they may not be able to pay leck-a-lite bill but lots of tourists will come here for a romantic candle light vacation right?
At the moment, EB is managed by Mandarin Oriental. They have a supposed standard to maintain and simply lowering rates usually only lowers the class of clients.
Yes this would be good for the numbers in the short run, but MO’s biggest income is from return clients… piss them off and then the numbers will spiral down again.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, EB does not offer the services or standard required to maintain such rates… this somewhat goes with what you are saying Will… but again, using the MO brand lowering prices is not an option, raising standards is… and as rude as this may sound, many bermudian staff are not up to that role.
And yes, i’ve worked at EB… so what i’m saying is not ignorant bigotry.
Maybe Mr. Chicken will hire these seven people?
I’m sure these laundry people were unionized and the BIU will be very generous in taking care of them in their hour of need. YEAH RIGHT!!!
We are hemorrhaging with no end in sight .
Now this is a vibe and we feel it ,we need change!
its YOUR fault people. You voted these clowns in, same mistake again?
13 years ago…the green shirts and stickers were everywhere saying MAKE IT HAPPEN, VOTE PLP!!!! Who guessed that this is what they meant.
…. please tell me that’s sarcasm.
If not, about 35% of the population were ‘guessing’ this is what they meant – and warning anyone who would listen and consider options beyond blind support for a party and their BS sound-bytes.
13 years later, 5% +/- have left and the remaining 30% are warning of the same thing.
Lesson to be learned here is, if you fail to study history you are bound to repeat it.
Voters, the mistake is yours to make.
it’s not even mid June, the BEGINNING of our “season” and hotels are reducing employee head-count. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of the long, hot summer to come.
We should not mistake Gov’t noise and diversion for anything more than what it is, an attempt to distract their employers (us) from their collective and individual failings. They are out of money, time and maneuvering room…and they’ve taken us with them.
Do we really think that the same people who got us all so totally lost are now the ones to find the way back?
We have no clear target market for tourism and we do no have a product that is modern or up to scratch to attract the type of tourist who will spend money on a hotel room, taxis, restaurants, shops, bars, nightclubs and boat rentals.
Under the PLP and specifically Ewart Brown the focus was on cruise liners, hence the vast amount of money spent on the Pier at dockyard. The cruise line passenger from New Jersey might buy a t-shirt and maybe lunch at Frog and Onion, but that is the extent of their expenditure in a nutshell. There are not many jobs provided off the back of this tourism focus. Jobs! We need tourism to be the other pillar in the economy that provides a decent % of jobs for the working and middle classes.
How do we do this?? What plans does the present government have in place to make this happen!?
Interesting. Mandarin Oriental has no less than 16 hotel projects under development globally. Of course, they could be at any stage ie. conceptual drawing stage, planning stage et al.
http://www.mandarinoriental.com/about_mo/developments/
Also, I was told by someone who used to work in Tourism that Elbow Beach wasn’t allowed to use “Mandarin Oriental” in it’s name because it didn’t meet their standards. If you look on http://www.experiencebermuda.com they are listed as Elbow Beach Hotel whereas both Princess hotels have “Fairmont” in front of them. Maybe their standards are different though.