Behind The Deal: Replay Resorts Acquires Antigua’s Half Moon Bay

Vancouver-based Replay Resorts, run by former Intrawest Corp execs, has bought Antigua’s Half Moon Bay Resort lands and plans to re-establish the site as a premier Caribbean destination for affluent, locally minded travelers.

Here’s Replay Resorts’ team flanking Antigua PM Gaston Browne; from left: Greg Ashley, Bill Green, CEO Michael Coyle and Paul Jorgensen. The deal includes 108 acres of oceanfront land, and Michael tells us the vision is to remake Half Moon Bay—once a playground that attracted celebs like Audrey Hepburn, Elton John and Bjorn Borg before falling on hard times in the '90s—into a “dense tropical paradise” with low-slung buildings that “slip into the landscape and almost disappear.” The resort will include a beachfront hotel, cottages and high-end villas, and there'll be lots available for custom-home builds.

The Half Moon Bay lands were acquired from Antigua's government for $30M, and the redevelopment will cost about $215M, says Michael, who launched Replay with other former Intrawest execs after selling the company they’d built into the world’s largest publicly traded resort developer—with 11,000 units, 18 villages, 26,000 restaurant seats and several hundred retail stores—to private interests in 2006. Michael says that experience gave his crew valuable insight into its guests’ evolving tastes. “They’re moving from tourist to traveler. The two most used words you hear today are authenticity and experiential.”

Reimagined Half Moon Bay will connect visitors with the food, culture and nature that surrounds them. The resort will have pools, a spa and fitness facilities, plus restaurants, bars and a retail village. But it'll also boast bike and walking trails, interactive guided experiences, and an edible landscape plan. And the resort will create hundreds of local jobs. All of which will please Half Moon Bay’s target market: wealthy Boomers feeling guilty they’ve “left the world in a state they’re not proud of,” Michael explains. “They’re clamoring to do the right thing, and that happens when they go to a remote destination like this.”

Half Moon Bay is Replay’s second Caribbean acquisition. Last year it bought One Ocean, a condo building on Paradise Island, Bahamas. It’s also repositioning Turtle Bay, a 450-room hotel and 36-hole golf course on Oahu’s north shore (above), "putting it on the map as an action sports destination for active affluent travelers,” Michael says. His team’s forte is transforming under-performing properties into global vacation hot spots. Intrawest bought bankrupt Mont Tremblant in 1991 and turned it into eastern North America’s best ski spot; after acquiring and merging Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, it quadrupled skier visits.

Back at Half Moon Bay, Replay is in talks with potential hotel brand partners, and plans to announce one this spring, with construction launching by year’s end. The goal is to make this one of the Caribbean’s finest new beach destinations. That's within reach, insists Michael, who's widely credited with redefining the resort village concept via principles of place-making and “experience engineering,” now standard worldwide, including, soon, at Half Moon Bay. “The reality is there’s not a lot of new development going on in the Caribbean today,” he says. “We’re one of the only ones, so hopefully we’ll be able to fulfill that promise.”