By Warwick Paradise Island – Bahamas
Couples seek the perfect location as the backdrop for a destination wedding, marriage proposal or romantic getaway. With 30 destinations and thousands of hotels, the Caribbean provides unlimited options which make it difficult to stand out and find your niche in this lucrative market. Our advice is to create romantic vacation experiences and weddings by identifying and focusing on your team’s strengths instead of trying to be everything to all customers.
As a hotel that has been open less than a year, the wedding team at Warwick Paradise Island – Bahamas had to quickly figure out how to succeed in a competitive Bahamian market. We had to identify our strengths as well as our limitations in order to balance our expectations and delivery with our guests.
As we designed the overall resort concept, we envisioned where we would host weddings and created a setting that would appeal to potential guests. We looked at all elements – from design of our wedding belvedere to Mother Nature’s influence – in order to form our final vision.
While location is important, it’s your people who make or break the experience. Our wedding team was trained to listen to guests’ needs and desires before trying to sell our packages or services. We want an understanding of what customers’ vision for their wedding day or marriage proposal is in order to create a deliverable experience that will be cherished for a lifetime.
Our team created standard packages that couples can view in our weddings brochure as well as romance specials posted on our website – which are used as the basis for what we are selling – but the product remains driven by the customer’s expectations. Couples do not fit neatly into any one-size-fits-all category; therefore, we implemented a high degree of flexibility within our offerings.
As a way of getting our feet wet, we slowly introduced romantic add-on amenities to gradually train our team on execution. As a result, we’ve identified positive attributes and pitfalls to guide our product offering.
Since launching our romance and wedding amenities, we developed relationships with local vendors so we can deliver on couples’ requests for their dream day. Our experiences can be custom-designed to reflect the personalities of each couple.
Our successes have come with proper training, listening to our clients and providing flexibility within our options. We have learned and played to our strengths to offer our guests a truly memorable experience.