Grand Cayman’s newest hotel, ONE | GT, is scheduled to open by the end of the year and, while much of the hotel is still a construction site, commercial director Bram Theeven says, “It’s all starting to come together.”
Theeven gave the Compass an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at how this 144-foot-tall building with 288,000 square feet of hospitality space is shaping up.
Its central location just behind Bayshore Mall makes it hard to miss and ONE | GT’s owners will be hoping that it lives up to the scrutiny, which will no doubt follow its official launch later this year.
“We’re leading the way in revitalising George Town and bringing life to the area,” Theeven said. “We are not just doing it for our guests and residents though; we’re building it for everyone.”
With 177 suites and residences, two pools and three restaurants spread across its 11 storeys, including its rooftop, ONE | GT has been a growing part of George Town’s skyline ever since breaking ground in 2022, and its owners intend it to make its mark from the ground floor up.
“We’ve got three restaurants and we created and designed them with the local community very much in mind,” Theeven said. “We want this to be the gathering spot. We have a lot of professionals in the area of George Town. … We have banks, financial institutions, professional services, so we want to capture that with a unique offering just a few footsteps away.”
On the ground floor at the front of the hotel, just steps from Bayshore Mall, will be ONE | GT’s Cafe Bellini, with indoor and outdoor seating and serving Italian-inspired food and drink, including pastries, coffee, gelato, sandwiches and signature Bellini cocktails.
In the evening, the cafe will remain open but just to serve gourmet food to go for guests, residents and locals.
“We don’t want any of our outlets to compete with each other,” Theeven explained.
One floor above will be the Perle fine-dining restaurant, which will offer French gastronomy with a Mediterranean flair and have an open-air kitchen and indoor and outdoor dining, while on the rooftop Byu will offer Asian fusion food and cocktails into the night.
All the food and beverage outlets will be run by executive chef René Cahane, originally from London, who has been working at Sandals resort in Saint Lucia for several years.
Around 350 people worked on the site during the peak construction phase but that has dropped down to around 100 now that the major construction work has finished. The challenge now is for the hotel to fill the 136 roles it needs to operate on a day-to-day basis and it will be attending next month’s job fair for Caymanians looking to work in the tourism industry.
“We’ve been ramping up our recruitment the closer we get to opening, as there are different phrases in our hiring process,” said Theeven, who is keen to employ Caymanians but appreciates the need to balance that with experienced staff in a luxury hotel brand.
“We don’t need a lot of the front of house, back of house workers, front line staff until we’re really opening, so … we have to make sure we’re timing that right with our management team and putting it all in place.”
While the area is still a building site, the layout of the hotel is becoming clearer day by day. The main entrance to ONE | GT will be to one side of the hotel building, with a driveway and turning circle for valet parking and guest drop-off leading into a reception lobby, which will have a chandelier descending from the floor above.
As well as the restaurants, the hotel will have a third-floor oasis pool, a gym and saunas but a main selling point of ONE | GT is its rooftop infinity pool, which will be an Instagrammer’s delight, flanked with sunken cabanas and fireplaces on either side.
Near-300 degree views stretch all the way round from the airport and Rum Point to West Bay, George Town waterfront and all the way to South Sound.
With parking at a premium during the day in George Town, ONE | GT has three levels of parking with more than 200 covered and outside spaces.
Out of the hotel’s 177 units, 122 were available for sale, of which 90% have already found buyers. Owners will be able to rent the rooms back to the hotel which, thanks to joining the Small Luxury Hotels of the World collection, will be available for booking on the Hilton booking systems and to its 180 million Hilton Honors members.
With continuing background noise from drills and building materials everywhere, it is hard to imagine the finished product, but, standing next to the rooftop pool, Theeven is already picturing the scene months from now.
“Just imagine what New Year’s Eve will be like out here,” he said. “There are some really, really cool and spectacular events that we can do up here.”
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Previously the developers promised a November opening, but this has always seemed unlikely, particularly as they are still relying on “artist’s impressions” of major elements of the hotel for the Compass tour. Significantly no opening date is given in this article.