Thirteen years ago the Lost City at Sol Kerzner’s Sun City was a building site littered with debris and scaffolding. A quarter of a century ago Sun City itself was being forged from the desolate landscape of a volcano crater. Just a decade ago Sol Kerzner made his first acquisition outside Africa and built the Atlantis, Paradise Island, creating one of the largest resort hotel complexes in North America. All dreams brought to successful reality.

Sun International remains the owner of Kerzner’s highly successful visions in South Africa, but he no longer owns the company. In 2002, in order to avoid confusion, Bahamas-based Kerzner International came into being and is as well known on the world stage as Sun International was on South Africa’s stage in the apartheid years. Nowadays, of course, both companies are big players in the global gaming industry.

Awaiting deregulation and, perhaps more importantly, taxation levels for the new casinos in Britain after deregulation, Sol Kerzner has already entered the UK market. Sol Central in unlikely Northamptonshire and the 2002 purchase of loan notes for around 30% of the debt of London Clubs International have given his company an important foothold. There is also talk of Kerzner International acquiring the Dome in London and turning it into one of Sol’s dream casinos.

Meanwhile the Atlantis, Paradise Island is due to be emulated in Dubai with the Atlantis, The Palm expected to open in 2007. Closer to home in the Caribbean there are people with similar vision wanting to emulate the Atlantis, although perhaps on a smaller scale. In Montego Bay, Trelawny and Kingston in Jamaica there are plenty of plans and the authors are getting impatient.

The Jamaican government has yet to authorize casinos on the island. Horse racing, the lottery, even slot machines in gaming rooms the length and breadth of the island, but no casinos. Earlier this year the government instructed the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BGLC) to study possible formats for casino gaming, but in the meantime the proposals for casino complexes have languished.

The Harrah’s Caesars merger is reported to have expressed interest in a $1 billion investment at Harmony Cove in Trelawny, northern Jamaica, should legislation be passed permitting casinos. A Canadian consortium has plans for a casino development encompassing the hotels Pegasus and Hilton in Kingston, and a group of Montego Bay developers has been waiting years for the go-ahead for casinos in this tourist centre for the island.

Maybe all visionaries and hardheaded business people in their way, but perhaps lacking some of Sol Kerzner’s flare and determination to make things happen. In Hong Kong he has just been presented with the Innovation Award at the Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific (HICAP). The award, voted for by a group of Asia’s hotel industry leaders, is for more than 40 years of dedication to the creation of unique resort projects and, in particular, his part in the revitalization of the tourism industries in Mauritius and the Bahamas.

To a greater or lesser degree most can only watch in admiration or envy as Kerzner, seemingly unstoppable, searches out the next challenge.

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