Dear Sir,

Horseshoe Beach Live, your lack of respect for the Bermuda Volleyball Association is appalling. Horseshoe Bay is a public beach. In 2020, you took over the Rum Bum concession and promised improvements. It has been four years, and I have seen minimal to no improvements.

You received special privileges from the Minister of Public Works to take over the lease, only to not hold up your part of the deal — and you have been nothing but disrespectful towards a league that has been playing on that beach longer than most of your employees have been alive.

To start the season, you tried using your “friends and family” pull to cancel the summer beach-use lease. Instead, you thought it would be more valuable to profit on the public beach by expanding on your inflatable “eyesore” business rather than encouraging Bermudians to be active.

Did you know that the BVA, and the beach volleyball programme, helps to develop young Bermudians to obtain volleyball scholarships, which contribute to lifelong friendships and learning lessons through sport?

Thankfully an agreement was made, but you forced us to move an extra quarter of the beach farther down so your inflatables could be rented to tourists at a large profit. By the way, what other country uses micro and nanoplastic-infested beach chairs on their world-class beaches?

All year it has been a struggle for your employees to clean up your chairs and umbrellas by our 6pm daily start time. Now, during the final stretch of summer, when the sun goes down at its earliest, your chairs are even farther down the beach — delaying the league even more, which resulted in games starting at 6.50pm and finishing, or being forfeited, in the dark.

For a country to charge a sugar tax and say it wants to promote a healthy community, whoever the Minister of Public Works is should be ashamed for profiting instead of promoting a better Bermuda. I understand the cruise ships bring in a ton of visitors and you want to provide them a great experience. But the public beach isn’t only for them or your chairs — it’s for all of Bermuda.

As games start at 6pm, why are you moving tourists three quarters of the beach farther down when there are spaces closer to the concession that you have leased?

Why aren’t the empty chairs moved earlier when the visitors leave to speed up clean-up?

Instead, your employees are hostile towards the league’s members trying to move things, tensions are raised between tourists and members asking them to move, and the police have been called.

This is not what the league or its members signed up for while trying to enjoy some evening volleyball.

The summer beach league is now over, but I write this in hope that things can improve. The league is on every weekday, and some Saturdays for tournaments.

There are hundreds of members going to that beach daily. I remember late nights and long days after games and tournaments at the Rum Bum before you took over the lease. Now, after how disrespectful your group has been, I will not step foot in that place, and I know many members feel the same way.

A good business usually models all possible customer bases, and you’re losing out on one. I hope next year, if you are still on the lease, that you think about the people you are excluding from using the public beach and spending money in your establishment.

The volleyball beach season is something I look forward to throughout the year, and it would be a shame if profits continued to come before promoting a healthy Bermuda.

Thanks, and end of rant. I have no affiliation with the volleyball association.

ROBBIE BAILEY

Devonshire