At age 17, Bernie Weatherhead entered the world of work as a junior overseer at a sugar plantation. Today, he is one, of Barbados’ most prominent hoteliers and astute businessmen with a reach extending beyond these shores.
That his profile in the tourism industry looms large, eclipsing his initial career in the agricultural sector, is testimony to his business acumen.
He told the Sunday Sun: “I was a junior overseer at Allendale Plantation, working for $110 a month and I only had one weekend off a month, starting at midday on Saturday and I had to be back on the job at 5 a.m. on Monday morning . . . that was a hard life.”
In sharing experiences of that period, he related one incident “that has stayed with me.”
“In those days, you had to go to the manager’s house at 5 a.m. exactly and he would lower down the keys in a basket. All the big doors had big keys in them that weighed about five pounds each. So one night, the basket turned over and a key hit me in my forehead and chopped loose my head and knocked me out. “Today, if I barely quarrel with a fella he wants to sue me.”
Weatherhead’s journey through the plantation system was one of constant movement upwards, with offers and counter offers for positions, eventually leading to the juncture that resulted in an altering of his trajectory and set him on a path towards the stature he enjoys today.
“I was at Allendale for a year and I was offered a job to go to Edgecumbe Plantation and right away they paid me for a whole year. They gave me $10 a month more. Sir John Chandler owned a number of estates and Allendale was one and so they back-paid me and begged me not to go. But Edgecombe was offering me to come there as what they call a senior overseer, because in the plantations it was usually manager and overseer, manager and assistant manager.
Largest plantation
But the big plantations back then had a senior overseer and a junior overseer and Allendale was quite big. Going to Edgecombe, which was the largest plantation (several joined together) in Barbados at the time, was a big thing.”
He accepted the Edgecumbe job for the more attractive salary of $130 per month, only to be lured back to Allendale 18 months later with the offer of the senior manager’s position at a salary of $300, rationalising that job would position him for promotion in one of the several plantations in the Allendale pool.
“I went back there and soon after they made me assistant manager of Turner’s Hall Plantation, then moved me up o Bentley, which was Todds.”
Between 1969 and 1970 when Barbadian families and companies were getting involved in hotel building (for example, Silver Sands Hotel built by the Ward family and Asta Hotel on Hastings Main Road owned then by the late Basil Gooding), Weatherhead segued into the hotel sector.
In 1970, he broke the news to the owner of the plantation where he was working, that he had been offered a job as project manager for a St Peter hotel to be built by Jason Jones and Company, after being told by that company he would be considered “for a position but not the general manager’s job.”
He oversaw the construction of Sandridge Beach Hotel, opened it as manager on February 8, 1971 and bought it 14 years later, the second hotel he would own, having purchased the Sugar Cane Club at Maynards, St Peter, four years earlier.
Tourism was tough
Sharing the circumstances surrounding the Sandridge Hotel purchase, Weatherhead said: “There was nothing happening in Barbados in the early 1980s at all and tourism was tough, tough, tough. That is why Jason Jones sold the hotel. They had it on the market and the chairman came to me and told me: ‘Bernie, I know you put a life into this, we have it on the market, but we will be prepared to sell it to you if you could get finance. We will sell it to you for what it cost us to build’.
I went to BDB (Barbados Development Bank) which had been opened by Government to try to save some companies, because in the early 1980s companies were just like, shutting down, and I borrowed the money to buy it and took it over.”
In jest, he added: “I was downstairs with my wife (Marilda) on a boat deck having a drink, and I said to her, ‘Well, we are the owners of Sandridge Beach Hotel and she said: ‘So how are you going to pay for it?’ I said: ‘Well, the worst thing that could happen is that I cannot pay for it. I will find out how very quickly and I will go into the bank and I will put the keys on the desk of the bank and say: ‘I have failed.’’
“Of course, she wasn’t amused, but I never had to do that, in fact,” he added quickly.
Sugar Cane Club was “a tiny little hotel with 23 rooms, on ten acres of land,” when Weatherhead acquired it and embarked on a refurbishment project that resulted in the creation of an inland hotel that from the outset attracted occupancy largely as a result of his astute marketing.
“Whenever I went into a travel agency overseas marketing this hotel, the first thing a travel agent would ask is: ‘How far away from the airport are you?’ When I said, ‘19 miles’ the people started laughing and got up to go for coffee and left me in the office by myself.”
Undaunted, he persisted with his marketing efforts.
“Those were tough days,” he admitted and related how he teamed up with the late Richard Williams, then manager of Cobblers Cove Hotel to promote the “two completely different properties – Cobblers Cove, a luxury hotel and Sandridge, an ‘A’ class hotel.
Weatherhead confessed he had no training in the hotel business when he became a hotelier.
Happy guests
”I went to Johnny Simpson up at Sand Acres, the owner and manager, and he told me something that stuck with me all my life – ‘Bernie, don’t be scared, Sandridge is 52 apartments. Think of it as a house with 52 bedrooms and you do everything, go through all the tour operators and the airlines and you try to market that property. Once you get people there, if one of them is not happy with the place, go into your office, write a cheque, give the people the cheque and tell them ‘Here is your money back, you are welcome to go somewhere else,’ because you are not going to win all of them. But make sure you have happy guests in your hotel all the time.”
He also turned to another seasoned hotelier, Peter McKeiver, general manager of Paradise Beach Hotel, where he went and “learnt all about the food and beverage and bar operation,” and spending time “burning the midnight oil to figure it all out.”
Weatherhead was only 26 years old when he became the youngest president of the Barbados Hotel Association (BHA), going on to be awarded “all sorts of plaques” and other accolades for his stewardship.
A story about his and BHA vice president Richard Williams’ business encounter with then United States businessman Donald Trump draws a laugh.
“We sat with Donald Trump (now President of the United States) and chartered a plane from him to fly some charters to Barbados with US firefighters.
“We went and visited Boston firefighters and we organised a big charter with Trump. We were worried about what we had to put upfront, but he said: ‘No you don’t have to put up anything upfront. I will schedule the plane and one week before departure you have to pay the full rate for the plane. We came back to Barbados and went to a couple of hotels and said: ‘We can get people, so if you think you can take ten rooms or five rooms or whatever, we will do a deal.” Weatherhead said the charter company went “bankrupt” three weeks before it was due to make that Barbados trip.
In the early days, the veteran hotelier invested much time into building relationships primarily with Canadian airlines and with local and foreign owners of accommodation properties and overseas tour operators, to drive tourism business here.
On the question of succession planning, Weatherhead said: “I never set out to get them involved.”
He explained his sons worked in the businesses “to get money” while they were studying and “when it was time to come home, they wanted to come with the companies.”
Today, he is chairman of the Sun Group Inc business empire he has built, with his son Alfredo as president and chief executive officer, while son Roddy oversees the hotel and related operations, while grandchildren and other relatives also play significant roles in the various sections. (GC)
