Club Med Columbus Isle

October 4, 2015

The Club Med Columbus Isle resort on San Salvador Island was impacted by Hurricane Joaquin as the storm passed just to the west of the island on Friday October 2nd. The resort was in its annual closure period so no guests were at the resort as the storm passed. A small team of staff and suppliers on-site are all safe and no injuries were reported.

We are currently assessing the impact of the storm to the resort and the infrastructure on the island. We are sending a team to the resort to assess the impact and provide a time frame for making any necessary repairs. Fortunately, our preliminary assessment indicates that the resort, which was built to withstand hurricane winds, did not incur significant structural damage. However, as is typical in this type of storm, there was damage to the exterior roofs, including lost shingles and waterproof membrane. In addition, there was minor water intrusion in some areas. The beautiful landscaping, including hundreds of palm trees, was badly damaged.

We are also working with local government agencies to assess the status of electricity, water, telecommunications, fuel and transportation services on San Salvador. Due to the extensive damage on other islands in The Bahamas such as Crooked Island and Long Island, the government announced that it is bringing in resources from other Caribbean countries to assist. The initial estimate that Bahamas Electric Company gave us to repair the power generation facility on San Salvador is 3-5 weeks.

The Columbus Isle resort was scheduled to reopen on October 18th. In order to ensure our guests have the highest level of service and comfort, we have taken the decision to revise the reopening date to December 20, 2015.

We are working with the airlines on alternative transportation arrangements for our guests. Our contact center will be reaching out to guests impacted by this temporary delay and offering them options to reschedule their visit.

Thank you for your continued support of Club Med.
Best regards,

Tracy Sedlak
Associate Vice President, Sales Operations
Club Med, North America

We flew just west of San Salvador today on our return from Club Med Turkoise and commented that we hoped that both the residents and the village facilities fared well.
We were at Turkoise during hurricane Joaquin and we did experience some significant weather there. We saw wind of 30 - 35 mph sustained and gusts of up to 45 mph. There was quite a few water leaks (you had to be careful where you sat during meals or you would get wet), quite a bit of debris fro the trees and a few small trees/shrubs knocked down, but nothing major. On the island there was some minor flooding but everything was cleaned up well and anyone arriving today would not guess anything unusual had happened. The beach was closed for 6 days and we finally were able to get out in a sailboat yesterday, before leaving today.