hen Tucker's Point Hotel & Spa opens in 2008, it will stand as the first luxury resort developed on the island in 35 years ? perhaps with good reason. According to Edward Trippe, such projects aren't for the fainthearted.

"I've been involved in hotel development in countries all over the world ? from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, to India, Europe and in the old days, the Eastern Bloc ? and I must say, in all my experiences, Bermuda was the most difficult place to put together a viable hotel scheme," he said.

The developer admits the hurdles stem from a justifiable need to protect the environment but are frustrating nonetheless.

"It's in part because it's a small island. Bermudians need to and should be protective of their environment. If they weren't, if they made it very easy for development to happen, the quality of life as we know it in Bermuda would be quickly lost. So there's a fragile balance. But it makes the development process extraordinarily difficult.

"Planning is obviously the biggest hurdle but financing a hotel in Bermuda comes very close after that as being the most difficult. We went for years struggling to cobble our financing plan together. Part of that was related to (the terrorist attacks of) 9/11. After 9/11 all of our financing collapsed."

One factor in Mr. Trippe's favour was the fact that his company already owned the land slated for development. Bermuda Properties Ltd. purchased the former Castle Harbour resort property from the Bermuda Development Company Ltd. in 1958.

"It was only because we were able to build on the residential side of the development that we were able to generate the capital necessary to put into the hotel," he added. "Bermuda's very expensive and maybe that's the third leg of the difficulty in building and developing resorts in Bermuda.

"It's probably twice the cost of building on mainland North America and you get the rates and the support of that. Service costs here are obviously much higher as well, so the fundamental economics of the industry are much, much more difficult than probably any other place in the world where you can get very low-cost help and service and the cost of construction is much less. We're spending over a million dollars a room to build our hotel ? and we already own the land. If you had to (factor the cost of) land in on top of it, it makes it almost an unimaginable difficulty to try to put (such a project) together."

The project at hand is a $350 million luxury resort, private club and residential community. The Residence Club at Tucker's Point, offering fractional ownership in luxury villas, opened in 2005. Tucker's Point Hotel & Spa is slated for completion next year, built on the bones of the former Marriott Castle Harbour Resort.

"Over the years I was involved, sort of peripherally, with Castle Harbour. I watched it in its heyday. It began to slip and then Marriott brought it back and it began to slip again. It just wasn't successful. In part, because the old hotel was so old ? its bones go back to the 1920s when it was designed as a winter resort ? but also because it just wasn't the right product for Bermuda at that time. So they ended up selling it really rather cheaply, to sort of the lower end of the market, just to keep the rooms filled, but really not successfully.

"I watched it and I watched the land for a long period of time, and when my father passed away in the 80s, my brother and I took more active roles in the leadership of Bermuda Properties and tried to figure out a way to bring new life into the property. Around 1990 we began to devise a new plan and that really is where Tucker's Point has gone."

Mr. Trippe was given permission to redesign the 200-acre property in 1995.

"That was challenged. Nobody was quite sure where we were going. Tourism as we know it today is a mixture of traditional hotel product together with fractional ownership in hotel condominiums and co-ownership residential. We were able to devise a plan which the government understood and bought into, but with 9/11 and other events at the time ? with uncertain financial markets, operating in not a very successful hospitality industry ? it took us far longer than we would have liked to see our plan unfold."

Work permits provided "a constant challenge" to all hoteliers, he added.

"For any hotelier, for anybody in the service industry, it is a constant challenge. For Bermuda to be successful it's going to have to be diligent, but relaxed. It would be a mistake for Government to think that they can manage our business ? we are the ones that can manage our business the best. We know what we need. We know how long it takes. The most frustrating thing is if you go and line up a very important person ? a chef or somebody who isn't available on island ? and you get a commitment from them and it takes so long to get government approval that the person has taken another job.

"Those are the realities of the business, the industry. There's a problem with staffing at every level of the hotel ? there's just a limited number of Bermudians that are interested in the hospitality industry, a limited number who are willing to work on Sundays and Saturdays and holidays and in the evenings. It is a challenge. It's very difficult and we're competing in environments around the world. When we open this hotel, it's not the Bermudian hotels that we're competing with, it's the product in the Caribbean and Asia, where the cost of labour is half of what it is here, or less."

Although he knew the obstacles prior to moving forward with the project, Mr. Trippe said he remained confident that the product he wanted to offer could work in Bermuda.

"I grew up in the hospitality business so I knew something about what we were doing," he explained. A graduate of Yale and Harvard, the hotelier has more than 25 years' experience in "the acquisition, development, financing and operation of hotel and resort properties".

Prior to his work with Tucker's Point, he worked with InterContinental Hotels Corporation, first as senior vice president of development and later, as president of its Europe & Middle East Division.

"I was responsible for InterContinental's growth throughout the world and later, was president of InterContinental for Europe and the Middle East with 50-odd hotels under my responsibility. So I knew something about the hotel industry. What we were doing in Bermuda was brand new for Bermuda but it was a product that had been very successful in other jurisdictions around the world. We were really just taking a very proven concept and bringing it to Bermuda. We were very confident. We were sure that if we built it people would come, people would invest, and people would visit Bermuda the way they used to in the heyday of Bermuda tourism.

"It's a market that is developing ? people who had known Bermuda for years, but for many reasons decided not to come back. With fractional ownership, which is a proven tourist product, we've been able to bring back many of them who really loved Bermuda. We're also seeing people who perhaps every two or three years would visit Bermuda. We now have them coming back two, three, four times a year because they love the product and they love Bermuda. It's been extraordinarily successful in that respect. It's been good for us and good for Bermuda."

When it opens in July of 2008, Tucker's Point Hotel & Spa will boast 100 rooms, 25 of which will be suites. With an average room size of more than 600 feet and 14-foot balconies outside, complaints of inadequate space are unlikely.

"This will be a truly, five-star-plus hotel," Mr. Trippe added. "It will have two superb pools. The main one will be on the west side of the hotel, situated high enough that it overlooks the lush coffee chine grotto, which is historic to the site, and then on to Harrington Sound and Dockyard in the west. It'll have all the sunsets and ambience of that view. It will be, without question in my view, the best in Bermuda.

"The hotel will have two superb restaurants, a 5,000-square foot conference centre, a board room and a world-class spa, coupled with the amenities of our golf, beach and tennis club. We think we will have all the facilities and amenities to maintain a mid-70 occupancy at very strong rates."

A remarkable staff makes the property even more attractive, he said.

"Everybody's motivated to make (Tucker's Point) work. Obviously I'm committed to it because I love Bermuda. I love what we've been able to do to this property and I believe in it. We've been very fortunate. We've been able to attract a first-class group of employees that want to work for us, that loved the old Castle Harbour, that love the new Tucker's Point and they're dedicated.

"But I think Bermuda is magic. I think Bermuda is an easy sell if you have the right product and with the airfares coming down now ? that will help immensely. We created the right product with our first fractional development. That's why we're building a second fractional development. In our first year of operation, we operated virtually 100 per cent over the summer and had a very high occupancy during the off-season. So our annual occupancy was over 75 per cent - which is unheard of in Bermuda. But that's because we built the right product and people, as we anticipated, they came."