The Xanadu Beach Resort & Marina, also known as the Xanadu Princess Resort & Marina, is a resort and marina on the island of Grand Bahama in the Bahamas. Built in 1968, the resort was purchased by Howard Hughes in 1972 and was for several years the most celebrated resort in the Caribbean and served as a hideaway for the Hollywood jet set of the era. The resort comprises 20 acres (81,000 m2) of beachfront, 215 rooms and an 80 slip marina on the southern coast of Grand Bahama.
Since its opening, the resort and the events that took place within its grounds have appeared on the front pages of tabloids with visits from The Rat Pack, including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as well as other celebrities of the era such as Cary Grant and Lucille Ball.
The resort was purchased by Howard Hughes in 1972 who moved into the penthouse floors of the resort and lived there until days before his death in 1976. While in residence, he rarely left the penthouse but was frequently seen looking out over the resort from the 13th storey balcony. He would order fishing boats which were docked in the resort's marina to go out to sea every day to catch him fresh fish.
After his death, the resort was sold. However, the penthouse floor in which he lived for the last four years of his life has remained empty for thirty years. The hotel is on sale for $45 million.
Famous quotes containing the words beach and/or resort:
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)