Original subtitles

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] Around the world,

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

a new breed of holiday destination is on the rise.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

Having a great time at Baha Mar! Woo!

[Narrator] Huge hotel complexes

built to satisfy every possible desire.

As long as it's not illegal or immoral,

your butlers will take care of it for you.

[Narrator] Whether you're a happy family

or a high-stakes gambler.

This is $2 million.

[Narrator] A mega-resort wants to sell you

the holiday of a lifetime.

I love the way they smell. [laughs]

[Narrator] With exclusive behind-the-scenes access

to one of the world's biggest and best,

we'll see what it takes to create five-star luxury

on an epic scale.

We're gonna go through 60,000 pool towels in a year.

[Narrator] The remarkable technology.

[liquid whooshing]

There's another drink!

Voila. [laughing]

[Narrator] Monster machinery.

One of these chiller plants costs about $280,000.

And we have seven of them.

[Narrator] And thousands of people working 24/7

every week of the year.

I like it when it's busy. Busy means business. [laughs]

[Narrator] These are the secrets of the mega-resort.

[gentle majestic music]

The Bahamas, a chain of 700 tropical islands

off the coast of Florida.

It's a dream destination for many

and a key player in the 7.1 trillion pound

worldwide tourism industry.

But with people willing to cross the globe for a holiday,

the competition has never been greater,

so resorts here and everywhere are upping their game

by getting bigger, much bigger.

Welcome to Baha Mar, a mega-resort that opened in 2017.

It covers 1,000 acres

and cost 3.4 pounds billion to build.

Here we are at Baha Mar.

Getting ready to go out to the pool for the day.

Here are my little friends in the koi pond.

[Narrator] But what exactly is a mega-resort?

It's a five-star holiday park for around 7,000 guests.

Everything is deliberately designed

so that as soon as they arrive, they never have to leave.

Fancy a bite? Try one of the 40 restaurants and bars.

Want to take a swim?

There are 11 different pools.

Or just relax on the 2,000 deck chairs along the beach.

Are the kids feeling bored?

How about a trip to the resort's private wildlife park?

[guests laughing]

Oh yeah. Have a go.

That is her way of saying,

"Welcome to the sanctuary and welcome to the Bahamas."

[Narrator] And when the kids have gone to bed,

the adults can spend their hard-earned money

in the biggest casino in the Caribbean.

Five or 50?

Mama got some new shoes. Six or 60?

[woman clapping]

There you go.

[Narrator] Of course, all those people

need a place to stay, so there's a cityscape

of hotel tower blocks with 2,300 rooms.

At the top of the luxury scale is the Rosewood,

where the lobby is filled

with a specially-designed fragrance

meant to make everyone feel at ease.

[gentle music]

Two-bedroom suites here cost more than 3,000 pounds a night.

This is our Rosewood Suite.

This is one of our signature suites.

It has a private terrace

with a jacuzzi and an ocean view.

And every suite in this hotel has its own butler.

We have our state of the art kitchen

and entrance for the butler service as well in the back.

We want to be refined, yet not pretentious at all

so we can create that relationship with all of our guests.

I think, in that way, we can create

memories that will last forever.

[suspenseful music]

[Narrator] To keep this machine running around the clock,

it takes an army of 5,000 staff.

They have their own city within a city.

Centered on a 500-meter long corridor

running through the resort's lower level called the I-95.

Nicknamed after America's main East Coast Highway,

it's how anything and everything

moves from A to B, unseen by guests.

This is a giant backstage world of storerooms and workshops,

kitchens and canteens.

It's also where thousands of employees begin their day.

To make sure they're all at work on time,

the resort has its own bus fleet.

Around the clock, rain or shine,

they ferry staff in from across the island.

[woman laughs]

The biggest team starting work each morning

are 210 Grand Hyatt housekeepers.

We have been 1,457 rooms occupied today.

We clean a lot of rooms.

Good morning, everyone. Morning.

[Narrator] It's a Herculean task, and manager Kendrick

relies on some special inspiration to get the job done.

One, two, three.

♪ Fill my cup and let it overflow ♪

♪ Fill it up ♪

♪ Fill my cup and let it overflow ♪

♪ Fill it up ♪

♪ Fill my cup and let it overflow ♪

♪ Let it overflow with love ♪

Amazing Grace!

♪ Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. ♪

That saved a wretch!

♪ Saved a wretch like me one day ♪

I was what?

♪ I was lost, but now I'm found ♪

I was blind!

♪ I was blind but now I see ♪

Good job, guys.

[all applauding] [all cheering]

Have a great day, guys.

One day I was preparing the pre-shift as normal,

and we had over 1,000 and something rooms being departed,

so right there and then, I was like,

"Oh, my God, these people are going to die

"because it's a lot of work."

And I was trying to figure out what I can do

to kind of build up the morale, make the day go smoother,

and it just came to mind to do a song, and they loved it,

so I just run with it ever since

because it gives them a boost of energy.

[Narrator] Before they go upstairs,

each housekeeper receives room assignments via touchscreen.

Armed with the hotel service optimization system

or HotSOS for short.

[gentle music]

Once they log into the HotSOS device,

the rooms that we assign in the morning,

it will go directly to them.

With a touch screen in their pockets

and a song in their hearts,

the team fan out across the two curving towers.

As guests leave their rooms for breakfast on the terrace

or a day at the pool, their housekeepers discreetly slip in.

Good day. Housekeeping.

The ladies have a section

where they are responsible for a certain amount of rooms,

and, any given day, we're not sure exactly

how bad the room is gonna be

or how good the room is gonna be,

and it could possibly be seven really dirty rooms.

[upbeat pensive music]

[Narrator] The whole cleaning routine

is designed for maximum efficiency,

right down to the sheets.

Every room has six separate sets

constantly moving between the off-site laundry,

store cupboards hidden on each floor,

and the beds, more than 10,000 sets in total.

Most guests are blissfully unaware of all this hard work

as they amuse themselves with everything from shopping

to watersports.

And for those who really want to push the boat out,

there's even a private island for hire.

[Guest] There is Baha Mar

and here's what they set up for us

on the private Long Cay Beach.

Wow.

Cheers! Cheers.

Cheers. [glasses clinking]

[guests laughing] Woo!

[gentle music]

[Narrator] By 3:00 p.m, 500 new guests start to arrive

for their own dream holidays.

[door knocking]

[Kendrick] Housekeeping.

[Narrator] But no-one can set foot in their rooms

without Kendrick's seal of approval.

The only thing that a guest call their own

when they're at the hotel is my room.

They don't go to the front desk and say,

"This is my front desk."

They don't go to a restaurant and say,

"This is my restaurant," but they do say, "My room."

So we wanted to make sure that experience for them

feels genuine, it feels authentic.

They get that feeling that it belongs to them and them only.

[Narrator] One room down, 1,456 to go.

And that's just one of the three hotels on site.

[upbeat music]

Next, the security teams sniff out trouble.

Good boy. Zook! Come on.

[Narrator] The party gets going at the adults-only pool.

[guests cheering] [water splashing]

And mega-rich gamblers get a taste

of the ultimate mega-resort lifestyle.

[Vincent] Welcome to the presidential suite.

[Narrator] The Baha Mar mega-resort.

A 2,300-room hotel complex in the Bahamas.

This is one of a fast-growing breed

of five-star holiday destinations

targeting a global audience.

Attracting travelers from around the world

means providing world-class service

on an unparalleled scale.

A golf course designed by the legendary Jack Nicklaus.

A convention center

that doubles as the country's biggest art gallery,

with a grand ballroom

big enough to host basketball tournaments.

[crowd cheering]

And behind the real tropical beach,

there's a pool laid out as a fantasy tropical paradise

with cliff jumps,

[woman screams]

waterfalls,

and an aquarium full of Caribbean wildlife.

[water bubbling]

Working on this kind of scale

means no-one is ever denied their place in the sun,

whether they're here for a relaxing break

or a 24-hour party.

[upbeat music]

This is Privilege Pool.

This is the adult pool at Baha Mar.

It's kind of like a nightclub, but during the day

with, well, a few less clothes.

[Narrator] The centerpiece of an afternoon at Privilege

are the champagne guns.

When a team of hostesses spray down the crowd

with six magnums of ice-cold bubbly.

[champagne splashing]

I'm really big on making sure

that we give that ultimate experience

to the person that's spending $300 at a chair,

to someone that is spending $10,000 at a villa.

[Narrator] Just for the privilege

of sitting poolside here,

clubbers must run up a sizable tab on food and drink.

Day beds will range 500 to 800,

depending on the size of bed you're looking to get.

These pergolas are around $2,000 food and beverage,

and then the grand cabanas are 3,500.

You have the five lounge chairs on the outside,

private bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, flatscreen TV.

You have everything in there.

[Narrator] For those seeking

the ultimate luxury experience,

the mega-resort is here to help.

Guests can be chauffeured around the island

in the resort's own fleet of high-end cars.

These include four Tesla Model S's.

Or, for extra special visitors,

a Bentley Bentayga.

[gentle light music]

Or how about a VIP stay in The Reserve,

a secluded hotel within a hotel

with a separate private entrance?

[Vincent] Welcome, ma'am.

It's so nice to have you with us.

Let me get the door for you.

[Narrator] The man who tends to Reserve guests every need

is head butler Vincent Saunders.

Once you book a suite here at The Reserve,

you automatically get 24-hour butler service.

Whatever they need, they give us a call

and we'll take care of it for them.

You know, anything that you want.

As long as it's not illegal or immoral,

your butlers will take care of it for you.

We have cookies and chocolates.

We have a chef on property that bakes these fresh every day

for The Reserve.

Would you like to try one? It's very nice.

I've eaten a lot of them. Just look at me.

You should try one.

[gentle bright music]

[Narrator] From the private lounge,

VIPs take a bank of private lifts

to the top eight floors of the curving East Tower.

The smallest room here is a one-bed suite.

The largest is the presidential suite.

Fun fact before we go in.

The first guest to stay in the suite

is Sir Richard Branson.

So it's my favorite, and you'll see why.

[door clunking]

Welcome to the presidential suite.

[Narrator] This one hotel room

is more than four times the size

of the average British house.

It's just over 4,000 square foot.

[gentle upbeat music]

We have seven balconies all overlooking

the beautiful turquoise Bahamian water.

It's just an amazing room.

Over here, we have the media room.

A lot of families, they come in

and they put the kids in the media room,

and they have their privacy.

They close this up and they forget about their kids.

We have three bedrooms spread out over two floors.

Each of them comes with its own en-suite.

Here we have a Roman tub for any romantic encounters

that the butlers may have in store for their guests.

[Narrator] One of the many surprises

the presidential suite has in store

is that it's not available to book.

Ever.

You would have to be an invited guest

of the casino to stay here.

You can't call up. It is not on the website.

It's exclusively for our high-end casino clients.

And most surprising of all,

many of those invited to stay here

are given this suite for free.

Welcome to the world of the high-rollers,

ultra-rich gamblers

who are willing to bet millions in a single night.

The resort wants them to wager it here,

the largest casino in the Caribbean.

More than 9,000 square meters of gambling with 120 tables.

[dice clattering] Yo!

[Narrator] For dice,

[suspenseful music]

cards,

Eight, 10. [ball rattling]

[Narrator] Or roulette.

[ball rattling]

And 1,100 slot machines.

The job of luring these coveted players to the Bahamas

falls to a team of casino hosts like Keith Miller.

He has a jaw-dropping array of perks at his disposal.

It goes all the way up to sending our private jet.

[gentle thoughtful music]

Wherever you are, we can come and pick you up.

Or arranging a trip on our 215-foot yacht.

I can assist with that.

The range is incredible,

and I just try my best to make sure that people are happy.

[Narrator] In return, Keith asks his clients

to do just one simple thing, gamble vast sums of money,

and he doesn't even mind if they win.

And it's fun to win. A lot of people win.

I've seen huge smiles walking out of here

with a lot of cash. [laughs]

[Narrator] That cash mostly changes hands

in a special private casino.

These are our private gaming salons

that we have for our ultra-VIP clients.

This is a standard gaming room

set up with a regular blackjack table,

but we can change it out to baccarat,

craps table, roulette wheel.

Whatever you want in here, we can facilitate.

This is for our highest tier of gamer.

It's not just everybody can come in here.

It's meant to be exclusive,

and normally that comes with a certain price point.

[Interviewer] And can you explain

what that price point is?

VIP. [laughs]

Very VIP.

[Narrator] High rollers have been known

to wager hundreds of thousands of pounds

on a single hand of cards,

and the casino helps facilitate these huge bets

with extra-high-value gambling chips,

some of which come with their own security escort.

These are $100,000 chips.

And there's a stack of it.

Just $2 million.

It's just chips to me.

It's the same as the regular $1 chips.

If you actually think in terms of money,

gonna freak yourself out,

so I just also keep in mind it's just a chip.

[Narrator] Hosting high rollers

can seriously boost business,

but there's another way the casino is upping its game.

[gentle pensive music]

Baha Mar's billionaire Hong Kong-based owners

have made a fortune serving Chinese gamblers

around the world.

Now they want to lure them here,

so they've added certain subtle touches,

red carpets woven with Chinese good luck symbols,

artwork in the shape of an eight, a Chinese lucky number,

and a Chinese restaurant with a doubly lucky 88 seats

and 88 dishes on the menu.

There's even a fountain that catches fire,

meant to create better feng shui for gambling.

It's all part of a bigger strategy

to tempt people into having a flutter.

Let's go! Seven or eleven.

Let's go, Nessa.

Five! You were right back, right back, two, three.

[Narrator] This giant room

sits at the very heart of the resort,

operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,

and almost everyone will pass through it

several times every day.

In fact, the entire property is designed so that all roads

lead to the casino.

[gentle upbeat music]

[ball clattering]

The vast array of games

means no-one is denied a chance to win or lose.

[chip rattling]

We won all kinds of money.

[laughs] It's my first game,

and I did better than I thought I would. [laughs]

[Narrator] With so much money floating around,

the casino needs a sophisticated security system

to protect it all.

Watching every table from several different angles

is a vast CCTV network known as the eye in the sky.

The exact number and position of the cameras

is a closely-guarded secret.

They're there to observe

and to help to ensure the integrity of the games as well,

but other than that,

we can't disclose too much of what they're doing.

But know that they're there to protect us

and to look out for us all.

[Narrator] And it's not just the casino

that needs security.

Between the high-end boutiques, the VIP clients,

the expensive cars,

and the sheer number of people milling around,

the whole resort needs top-quality protection.

The biggest thing that we do

and the thing that we worry about

is really the guest experience.

When people come to the Bahamas,

they don't wanna think about security.

When you go on vacation or holiday,

you don't wanna think about, "Is the place secure?"

Normal people don't have that in their head.

So our job is to make this place feel secure,

but also not feel like you walked into Fort Knox.

[Narrator] But subtle as it may be,

security here is serious business.

So serious,

the resort employs an unusual team of specialists

that few hotels can manage, five sniffer dogs

trained to look for either drugs or explosives.

Any time a dignitary or someone from government comes,

we have our dogs sweep the areas that they're going to be in

to make sure that we don't have any trouble.

And then our narcotics dogs, obviously narcotics. [laughs]

[Narrator] The newest recruit is Teo,

a two-year-old golden retriever.

Here, boy. What's this?

You're working every day with a best friend.

That's how it feels, and he's a happy dog.

We have the same personality, and he just brightens my day

and brightens the day of everybody around him.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Next,

the animal antics continue at the wildlife park.

[bird squawking] Woo-hoo!

[Narrator] Guests splash out on a close encounter.

[upbeat dance music]

And the mega-resort stocks up on a few essentials.

We go through approximately

500,000 paper towels in a month.

Kind of crazy.

[intense music]

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] Being a five-star mega-resort

means offering things

that no other holiday destination can match.

Of course, there's swimming,

[water splashing]

sports,

24-hour-a-day gambling,

and dozens of places to eat.

On top of all that,

this resort has something fairly unusual,

its own animal collection for guests to enjoy.

From 44 tropical birds that will feed from your hand

to a school of sharks that could easily take off a finger.

But the stars of the animal show are, without question,

the flamingos on parade.

[bright music]

It's definitely what makes us unique for sure.

[Narrator] These four flamingos were all born right here

at the mega-resort.

Over the last year,

chief flamingo officer Stacy Spurlock and her team

have been hand-rearing them.

Whenever you're raising long-legged birds,

it's very important, through that developmental stage,

that you exercise them.

Woo-hoo!

[Narrator] Now they see humans as part of the flock.

As you can see, they're not following. They're leading.

Welcome to our flamingo parade. How awesome is this?

These are the Caribbean flamingos.

They are the national bird of the Bahamas.

This is my first real vacation,

and I get to spend it with some flamingos,

and they're beautiful.

[Narrator] Back at the resort's specially-built habitat,

there are another 18 birds on display 24/7,

always ready for a quick selfie.

But because the four roving flamingo ambassadors

might possibly follow a guest to the pool,

they live out of public view in a special enclosure.

I love the way they smell. [laughs]

It's a very powdery, fishy smell,

and it is just a comfort to me.

Isn't it? Isn't it?

Yeah.

I know you're like,

"That's not that's not a good smell, Stacy.

"You're weird. You're weird."

I am weird.

You're my baby girl. [puckering]

When I'm having a rough chief flamingo officer day

doing all paperwork and all the other managerial stuff,

and I need a little bit of therapy,

I just come right out here and play with my girl,

and get some loving.

"I don't love you.

"No. That's what I think of you."

[bird squawks] [Stacy laughs]

You get pooped on by a flamingo,

you might have some good luck there.

[gentle upbeat music]

But Stacy is not the only one who interacts

with semi-wild animals on a daily basis.

Guests can book their own close encounters

with some scary-looking marine predators in The Sanctuary,

the resort's 662,000-liter aquarium.

The residents include eight nurse sharks

who swim around groups of carefully coached volunteers,

12 rays who will swim straight over their laps,

and five green sea turtles

who always seem keen for a spot of lettuce.

[Instructor] Don't be shy, guys.

[Narrator] These encounters often include a chat

with the resort's chief scientist, Vanessa Benjamin.

You know, these are endangered, right?

They eat jellyfish,

and if you have a plastic bag floating in the water,

it looks just like a jellyfish to them

and so they eat it,

and so be careful where you dispose of your trash.

[Narrator] Over at the touch tank,

Vanessa has her own Bahamian cultural icon to show guests.

Okay.

[Narrator] A giant sea snail called a conch.

So here we have the mouth in the middle,

the eyes on the end,

and then this is the giant foot.

This here is what we call an operculum

that they use to crawl along and dig their way in the sand.

[Narrator] And the chief scientist

is running a real scientific study by collecting their poo.

We would try to collect some

to understand microplastics in conch

and understand their diet and what they're eating,

because plastic pollution is a major threat

for our oceans in general,

and so we're part of a Caribbean-wide study.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] To maintain this state-of-the-art facility,

the resort employs a specialist team led by Dirk Westfall.

They tackle a bewildering array of jobs

from cleaning the aquarium while the animals are still in it

to trimming stingray barbs like fingernails

so guests don't get a nasty surprise.

And behind the scenes, they manage a filtration plant

that processes 2,400 liters of seawater a minute.

These are three foam fractionators or protein skimmers.

They take air and inject it into the saltwater

that's going through the filtration system.

It's the same thing that you see in the ocean.

When you see large amounts of foam on the beach,

that's the organics that are in the water

that are coming out.

It's the same process.

We use that natural process to clean our water.

[Narrator] But where does all that seawater come from?

Surprisingly, it's not from the sea,

but from a salty well 250 meters below the island.

This adds another layer of filtration

as water seeps from the ocean

through layers of rock and sand.

It's pumped from here to the main aquarium.

And also to four isolation tanks

that serve as a quarantine area

and onsite veterinary hospital.

These are some of our new arrivals,

queen angels here which are the yellow and blue,

and our two new puffers which have a lot of personality.

We also have a yellow ray who came to us,

and she has just recently given birth to little pups.

Once they reach adulthood,

we'll use them as animal ambassadors in our touch pool.

[Narrator] This room also has another purpose,

one that Dirk will hopefully never need to rely on.

Every building on this campus

has been built to withstand hurricanes.

If there is a severe storm,

we'll bring the animals here so that they're safe.

This room has solid concrete walls.

There's probably very little

that will actually blow through it.

[water bubbling]

[Narrator] These provisions are necessary

because, in this part of the world,

tropical storms are a fact of life.

[thunder rumbling]

And even mega-resorts are not immune to the weather.

[rain pattering]

Between June and November each year,

the staff stand ready for the worst.

The hotel is prepared.

We're always prepared for hurricanes.

We actually have a hurricane storeroom.

We try to get prepared, ready to go.

First aid, batteries, flashlights, generators, pumps, ropes.

Anything to do with safety.

[Narrator] Having a room stocked with emergency supplies

is just one part of a grand plan.

Every door and window is built to withstand

winds of up to 180 miles per hour.

The resort's ground floor is not actually on the ground.

It's raised six meters in the air

to prevent flooding.

Accessed by a discreet network of bridges,

escalators, and stairways.

And there's one final line of defense.

Underneath the holiday-makers playing on the beach,

there's a 4.5-meter concrete retaining wall

that stops the resort's foundations being washed away

by a violent storm surge.

If there was a hurricane or a hurricane was to come here,

I wouldn't wanna be on the top floors.

[laughs] I'd wanna be down lower.

But other than that, I think the property is fully

capable of handling a hurricane if we was to have one.

[Narrator] Even when hurricanes

aren't threatening the resort,

there's a continuous stream of problems to tackle.

From constantly keeping the paint fresh

to daily equipment breakdowns.

And because it's impossible to find specialist spares

on a small tropical island,

Sean keeps an Aladdin's cave of replacement parts.

Including one room with nothing but light bulbs.

Basically, everything is LED,

which means it lasts longer, burns less energy,

and [chuckles] more expensive. [laughing]

[Interviewer] Do you know how many actual light bulbs

there are in this whole property?

No, I don't think I could give you

a quite accurate number, but I know it's millions.

I think we in the millions of light bulbs on this property.

[gentle pensive music]

[Narrator] And when one of those

millions of bulbs burns out,

Sean has to do his own recycling.

This machine is what you call a bulb eater.

It actually eats the bulb. [laughs]

It's ready to go.

[machine whirring]

You start it up, then we drop it in.

And actually, see, it's actually...

See what's going on? It's actually pulling the bulb.

So it pulls it in. [bulb whooshing]

And it's gone. Quick as that.

The vapors and the gasses go into a filtration system

and then the glass goes to the bottom here,

and once it's full, the glass is used for recycling.

[bulb rattles] [bulb whooshing]

[Sean chuckles]

[Narrator] So, how does a place like this

get all the supplies it needs?

It all starts with this man, Patrick Kluck.

What is my job?

Mine is basically, I'm the one who decides

when, how, and where we're gonna be buying things from.

And the logistics, for everything you see coming in,

comes through my office as well.

[Narrator] Three days a week,

a ship docks here from Fort Lauderdale, Florida,

with at least 10 shipping containers

exclusively for Baha Mar.

Oh, this is our lifeline.

98% of everything we buy for the resort comes in this way.

If a container ship doesn't come in one day,

we actually have enough to take care of that.

If we went into a two-day or three-day

where we have tropical storms and those kind of things

and the vessels can't sail,

all of a sudden it has a very quick trickle-down effect.

It can be critical because all of a sudden,

the waiter's sitting there and he has to explain to a guest

that he doesn't have the fish

or he doesn't have the blueberries that she wanted to order.

And then the guest sits there and says,

"Well, why am I at Baha Mar?

"This is supposed to be the best."

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Perishable items

are driven straight to the resort

and often served to guests that very night.

But for goods with a longer shelf life,

Patrick creates a vital buffer of back stock

by squirreling them away in warehouses.

Here, mostly what we have

are things that turn over in a rapid pace.

So, in other words, things that are in here

will stay here for maybe a week to two weeks.

Otherwise, it's being sent over to the hotel for use.

Right here, actually, is a shipment that we got in of water.

Actually, it came straight over to us from Europe.

Actually, from Hampshire, England.

So, we have both the still and the sparkling.

We bring this in solely for our Rosewood guests.

Currently, we have 36 pallets

and there's 48 cases of water on every pallet.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] That's one month's supply

for just the smallest of the resort's three hotels.

And once it's all been drunk,

there'll be quite a few trips to the loo.

This is toilet paper.

You know, things that you've just got to have, right?

So nothing fancy.

We have paper towels, some more paper towels.

We go through, approximately,

500,000 paper towels in a month.

Kind of crazy.

[Narrator] Because almost nothing is available locally,

every conceivable eventuality is covered.

A five-star hotel room can never have a broken telly,

so Patrick has 150 spares on hand,

as well as 10,000 replacement pool towels.

We're probably gonna go through

somewhere between 55 and 60,000 pool towels in a year.

So it's quite a few pool towels.

[Narrator] One warehouse contains nothing

except spare hotel furniture

and roll after roll

of the specially-commissioned casino carpet.

[truck beeping]

But there's one thing Patrick

never has to worry about storing for long, food.

From eight in the morning until seven at night,

a constant stream of provisions flows from the loading dock

to the 40 restaurants and bars.

And from there

to the guests,

in one of the 15,000 meals prepared here every day.

[upbeat music]

Next,

drinks are served at the mega-resort.

One chef cooks up a five-star mega meal.

This is a 50 ounce Wagyu tomahawk.

This is $265 on the menu right now.

[Narrator] And thousands of staff get suited and booted.

I like the cocktail dresses 'cause they're sexy.

The cocktail dresses are sexy.

I'm not a T-shirt kind of a girl. [laughs]

[intense music]

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Like any self-respecting five-star destination,

the £3.4 billion Baha Mar mega-resort

has plenty of luxury amenities.

Like a spa with 24 treatment rooms.

It's run by a British company,

and they brought in Dawn Holder from Rochdale to oversee it.

Welcome to ESPA.

This is our VitaJuwel.

In the center, in the vial, is actual crystals.

It infuses the water with vibrations.

The re-mineralized water then enters your body

and then it gives off the health benefits,

depending on the stone that's inside the vial.

We have the Happiness vial in here at the moment.

We also have a Lunar vial,

and we have a Vitality vial also.

[Narrator] But this being a mega-resort,

one spa isn't enough.

Dawn has two spas.

One upstairs for the guests and another downstairs,

offering treatments for the staff.

We offer from nail services

to back, neck, and shoulder massages to facials,

and we even have barber services.

[clippers buzzing] [barber speaking faintly]

[Interviewer] Does it cost as much to go down there

as it does to come up here?

No. [laughs]

It's very, very, very competitive.

[bright upbeat music]

[Narrator] The employee spa is just one shop

in a virtual high street below stairs.

Staff rarely have the time to leave the resort

for personal business,

so the resort brings the business to them.

But there's one thing

that you won't find in many town centers,

a laundry service on steroids.

[upbeat music]

This is the uniform room.

We have nine conveyors, A through I.

Each conveyor holds 300 to 750 slots,

and each slot holds anywhere

from six garments to 12 garments,

depending on how many pieces that position holds.

When our associates come to work in the morning,

they bring their ID to one of the conveyor doors,

where they'll swipe their badge,

the conveyor will go around and it will stop on their slot.

It literally only takes you 30 seconds or so

to get your uniform and get on your way.

I love it. This way, I don't have to do this at home.

I come to work and it's all ready,

and I'm off to change.

Would you like to come?

No? Okay.

Bye.

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] In total, the resort has more than 75,000

separate items of clothing in circulation.

We've got about $4.7 million in inventory.

Some of the more interesting uniforms,

of course, is our cocktail uniform.

Always a fun one.

[Narrator] For Brigitte,

having improperly dressed employees is simply not an option.

So, the resort cleans their clothes for them,

handling up to 3,000 pieces of laundry a day.

All tracked around their system by electronic tags

sewn into each garment.

The laundry will collect the soiled uniforms,

take it to the laundry plant for processing.

After 24 hours, the clean uniforms

are delivered back to the uniform room,

and it starts all over again.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Add in sheets, towels, and dressing gowns

from 2,500 guest rooms, the laundry list runs into

the tens of thousands of items every single day.

We just received six racks from the laundry.

Each rack holds 80 garments, sometimes 79. [laughs]

Someone was feeling a bit lazy and forgot to hang one.

I like the cocktail dresses, 'cause they're sexy.

The cocktail dresses are sexy.

I'm not a T-shirt kind of a girl. [laughs]

[Narrator] As soon as employees look the part,

they're dispatched to their station,

and every station has its own unique look.

275 different ones in all.

From polo-shirted beach attendants to a formal bar

that's all about smoke and mirrors, literally.

So, I'm making the smoked old fashioned,

using a Woodford Reserve bourbon.

[whiskey trickling]

Right now, I'm gonna smoke the apple woodchips.

So, we smoke the jar.

Once this is done, I'm gonna pour the drink inside.

That's how we get that smoked flavor.

We do our own infusions here.

Island Bliss, for example,

we infuse it with watermelon and rosemary.

And we also have another one called Crimson Pixie,

which is tequila infused with jalapeno.

And then we have another one with mango and jalapeno.

And we have another one with pineapple and cilantro.

[Narrator] While Leslie is busy presenting

the smooth service to his guests upstairs.

[Leslie] There you have it, smoked old fashioned.

[Narrator] Executive chef Thomas Griese is downstairs,

getting a feel for tonight's dinner.

It looks like an order just came in from Chicago.

This is great, the muscle's still tight.

15, 20 steaks per box, three times, it's a lot of steaks.

Upwards of, like, probably 1,000-plus.

[Narrator] Most restaurants would order meats

pre-cut into steaks.

At the mega-resort, that's just not good enough.

They have to be cooked right here

in the specially-built butcher shop

by Thomas's hand-picked master butcher.

This is the band saw that we do our fabrication on.

And again, we're gonna get about

five or six porterhouses out of this one.

I'm gonna let Joseph 'cause this is his forte.

[saw whirring]

Joseph is making sure

that we're fabricating to the right spec.

That's a top-quality steak.

Better than anything else in the world.

By the end of the night, this steak will be cooked,

and hopefully, somebody will be really happy.

[upbeat pensive music]

[Narrator] All this meat is destined for one restaurant,

Carna, a steakhouse owned by Dario Cecchini,

the world's most famous butcher.

The special tonight is gonna be your heirloom tomato salad

with California walnuts,

a little bit of the Gorgonzola dolce,

balsamic caviar pearls,

and we're finish it off with some basil oil.

Push the tomahawks tonight.

[all clapping]

We are!

[All] Carna.

Great. Thomas is Dario's protege,

and it's fair to say he's obsessed with steak,

even displaying it in the foyer,

like expensive jewelry.

This is the butcher's shop showcase.

This really displays a lot of the heart and soul

behind our meat program that we have here.

Our baseline filet is an eight-ounce

beautiful Australian Wagyu.

Cowboy cut is dry-aged in Chicago,

in a special cooler that we have

that's allocated just to Carna to our specifications,

as far as how long we wanna dry-age it for,

what percentage of humidity,

and what temperature it's gonna be controlled at.

[Narrator] In the kitchen,

chefs have been working since 7:00 a.m.,

preparing for the night's service.

This is a 50 ounce Wagyu tomahawk,

currently the biggest steak we have.

It's three pound of meat.

This is $265 on the menu right now.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Long before a single diner

even sets foot in the restaurant,

steaks go through an elaborate pre-cooking routine,

overseen by Facundo,

the restaurant's Argentinean grill master,

working at a specially-imported Argentinean grill.

We do a two-folded process with our meats.

We're smoking these right now.

Wood-smoked chips will give that rich flavor that we want,

like a wood fire.

We have this beautiful smoke

and this herbaceous crust that's on the outside of them.

Now, we take these off and let them rest.

We're gonna wait until our guests are saying

"Okay, we want our steak rare or medium-rare,"

whatever it may be.

We'll finish off in a high temp broiler,

that kind of New York city-style char.

[Narrator] Around 7:00 p.m., the orders start flowing in.

A year ago today,

we were on the other side of the property getting married.

She decided to stick with me for a year,

so I figured I'd kind of throw in a little bonus

and bring her to dinner, so.

One thing that makes great food better

is always the service,

and I think the service here is bar none.

Let's get three bowls up in the window

and we'll be ready to plate.

[Narrator] Thomas has to get hundreds

of gourmet dishes out the door,

which means orchestrating a scene

of carefully controlled chaos.

It's a lot like herding cats.

I mean, you've got 100 cats running at you at once.

You gotta make sure that they're in an organized fashion.

[Narrator] It's only now,

with hungry guests tucking into their starters,

that the steaks finally complete their long journey.

Steak just came in.

We've fabricated to our specifications,

we've wood-smoked it,

we've cooked it to our desired temperature,

and now we're looking to serve it and eat it.

[Narrator] And to go with the best steaks money can buy,

Thomas offers some appropriately priced wine.

Definitely, one of my favorite reds, Screaming Eagle.

Very limited production, high-end mountain fruit,

a really great bottle of wine.

5,000 for the bottle itself.

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] Next, the sun goes down,

but the fun carries on.

[Card Dealer] Blackjack, right off the bat.

[all laughing] 11.

[Narrator] The night shift breaks out the elbow grease.

And the mega-resort feeds the 5,000.

This is the best place at Baha Mar.

This is where we come to eat.

[intense music]

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] It's the end of the day at the mega-resort,

and a well-worn routine is in progress.

Attendants gather up

25,000 pool towels to be washed for tomorrow.

And as the sun sets,

the casino is gearing up for the big evening rush.

Tonight, there will be a lot of cash at stake,

and it's critical that everyone plays fair and square,

even the staff.

So, there are rules for everything.

As dealer Valentino opens his table,

manager Denise watches carefully

to make sure he's not cheating.

And he has to watch her in return.

Their first job is to bag up and destroy last night's cards,

so no-one can slip a spare ace up their sleeve.

Every time we open up tables,

we put a brand-new set of cards on them.

The first process is to break the seal of the cards

and take them out.

[Narrator] Tables use up to eight decks at once

to stop players guessing which card might come next.

[gentle dance music]

In total, the casino opens

and discards around 750 decks daily.

That's close to 15 million cards a year.

Then there's the money.

When this table would have closed last night,

$1,105,000 in chips were in this float.

So, when we open it the next day, we need to make sure that

there's still the same amount of chips.

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] At any one time,

there's around 60 million pounds worth of casino chips

in circulation, all backed by real cash to pay the winners.

[Card Dealer] Good luck to everybody.

Blackjack, right off the bat. Ah!

[all laughing] 11.

[Narrator] In blackjack,

it's each player against the house,

but the staff aren't necessarily rooting for the casino.

We don't tell them how to play,

but if we see that they're doing something

that they really shouldn't be doing,

we try to guide them in the right direction.

There you go. Blackjack. Oh, my God!

There you go.

Wow, very nice, very nice.

Believe it or not, the dealers want the patrons to win

because we collect tips,

so the more they win, the more I get.

Tiffany!

Tiffany's coming with me on holiday next time.

[man laughing]

The house is in business to make money,

but there has to be winners and losers.

We were playing roulette earlier today.

Lost a lot to roulette. [laughing]

We're not good at anything,

but we enjoyed losing it seems. [laughing]

It's great watching people

and listening to their interactions.

It's a fun experience.

21, guys. Oh, no! [laughs]

[Narrator] Aside from gambling,

casino patrons have one other major past-time, drinking.

The busiest bar in the mega-resort isn't a bar at all.

It's the casino.

And all their booze comes from the pump room,

managed by Liz Cheney.

This is our tequila wall.

This is a favorite recently,

the tequila that was founded by George Clooney

and Rande Gerber.

You have the group of guests that come in

and they're more trendy

and they wanna find the new, hip stuff.

And so, we don't ever wanna say no.

[Narrator] Never saying no

means Liz always has more than 1,000

top-grade bottles in stock.

I'm not really sure how long it would take

to empty all of this out, but I would say two or three days

because we place our orders constantly.

[Narrator] These are destined for the bars upstairs,

where skilled bartenders pour drinks

and make cocktails with a flourish.

[gentle upbeat music]

But the vast majority of booze

is dispensed directly from the pump room,

using this hi-tech system

that holds up to 240 bottles of alcohol at once.

These are all connected to the one system.

There's about 100 yards of tubing

to get from here to the bars.

At each bar, there are several guns

that dispense up to 40 different drinks

at the touch of a button.

[liquid whooshes]

There's another drink.

When you hear that little [puffs],

that means that they're popping the gun. [chuckles]

Voila. [laughing]

[Narrator] Sitting between the bottles and the guns

are 80 vacuum pumps,

which allow precisely one shot of alcohol through

with each press of the button.

[liquid whooshes]

There are also touch screens

which can mix alcohol in any combination to make cocktails.

If they wanna come in and order a Bahama Mama,

which is very popular on the island,

they just hit the Bahama Mama button,

and all of these work together,

they talk to each other and they go into the tubes

and they end up in the glass.

I think it's great! [laughing]

At the end of the day, happy guests,

that's what it's all about.

[Narrator] Beyond the casino,

there are no less than 18 bars and nightspots,

10 of which stay open into the small hours.

And naturally, a mega-resort has to have its own nightclub.

[upbeat dance music]

But as happy guests party the night away,

a division of crack troops move into position.

The 200 cleaners of the public areas department.

A separate squad is assigned to each

of the resort's 32 kitchens,

which must be washed down from floor to ceiling.

The hardest job on the night shift, kitchen cleaning.

It's a massive undertaking.

You have to clean every kitchen every night

because we're serving guests every night.

[Narrator] Across the property,

every square centimeter of public space

must be scrubbed nightly, from the lobbies to the loos.

And if people are still partying,

the troops must simply maneuver around them.

Even the most complex jobs,

like cleaning the 192,000-pound casino chandelier,

have to be managed while gamblers are still at the tables.

Four times a year,

these specialists come in to clean it by hand.

Each one of the 5,000 crystals must be polished

one by one by one.

[relaxed music]

It takes 10 nights to complete the job.

Some things are best done with the hands.

Old-fashioned elbow grease.

[Narrator] Around 5:00 a.m.,

most of the resort is ready to go for the new day ahead.

[waves lapping]

One of the last things to be cleaned is the beach,

dredged at dawn by a special mechanical rake.

[gentle majestic music]

And, as the sun comes up,

the day shift takes over.

Over here, cleanliness is next to godliness, sir.

For the sake of the wildlife,

we have to clean the sand from the straws, debris,

so it won't get actually into our beautiful waters

to get in the turtles' noses

or, you know, so the animals wouldn't feed on them.

So, we have to do a whole process on this beach.

[Narrator] The process finishes with arranging

2,000 deckchairs into perfect rows.

[gentle upbeat music]

By 9:00 a.m., another day of five-star luxury

is well underway.

That means, above all else, eating.

No matter what kind of meal a guest is looking for,

the mega-resort aims to provide it,

and everything has to have that extra twist.

Morning coffee is served with digital foam printing.

Lunch can be taken right on the beach

from a food truck.

But perhaps the most extraordinary restaurant here

is not for guests at all.

It's the staff canteen.

Hello.

Welcome to Cafe Blue.

This is the best place at Baha Mar.

This is where we come to eat. This is lunchtime.

[Narrator] Seven days a week, from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.,

a team of 47 people, led by head chef, Shane Darrell,

feeds every employee on site.

I'm gonna need an additional four pints worth of product.

Okay, chef.

Okay.

[Narrator] That makes this

the single busiest kitchen on the property.

This kitchen is very vital.

Because you have a lot of hungry, hungry associates.

[Narrator] With so many mouths to feed,

it's easy to think the fare here

is little better than old school dinners.

Well, think again.

You'll have salmon filet, beef short ribs,

you'll have the mahi-mahi filet.

You'll have baby back ribs.

Today, they have everything Bahamian.

They have peas and rice, plantain, fish, crabs.

I like the macaroni. It's really, really nice.

How are you?

Chantalia, one of our cooks.

She did some guava duff for this evening's dinner.

Guava's a fruit,

and you take that fruit and you wrap it in a dough,

you steam it.

Then you have a sauce that goes along with it.

You can add rum to it. And it's awesome.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Narrator] Every day, Shane and his team

dish up around 4,000 meals, for free,

because every employee is given a $10 lunch allowance.

I got rice, I got ham, I got crab.

I got all of this and dessert for $8.

If I'm really hungry, I can come back

and use my other $2 later.

[Narrator] That leaves Shane with a colossal grocery bill.

Right now, we spend anywhere

from $100,000 to $200,000 weekly

on supplies to feed the staff.

[Narrator] Next, it's tee-off time at the mega-resort.

[upbeat music]

The staff try to beat the heat.

And engineer Sean turns on the juice.

You'd hear, clack, clack, clack!

[intense music]

[majestic music]

[Narrator] In the Bahamas,

temperatures regularly top 32 degrees.

That's a big selling point for the mega-resort,

but it also creates a big problem,

how to keep 7,000 guests

and the 5,000 staff who serve them cool.

The solution is hidden at the back of the convention center.

The biggest air-conditioning plant in the country.

These massive machines are so powerful

only three of them are usually needed.

But even if they all broke down at once,

no-one would break a sweat

because there are four others waiting on standby.

One of these chiller plants costs about $280,000.

And we have seven of them.

That's almost $4 million.

[Narrator] Although costly, the system works

on an incredibly simple idea.

It chills plain water, then shoots it around the resort

through miles and miles of pipes.

The water cools the buildings,

then comes back to the chillers once again.

It takes millions and millions of gallons of water,

that runs through the hotel and hotel pool.

Millions of gallons of water.

[Narrator] And Sean keeps

the whole system running smoothly

by using a free eco-friendly natural coolant, seawater,

pumped up from one of the many deep wells under the resort.

Without the deep wells, the chillers can not run.

They pull water from the ground, into the chiller,

cools the chiller, then it pumps it back out.

[gentle pensive music]

[Narrator] After the salty water

cools off the chiller plant,

it gathers in lakes at the resort's golf course,

where it's used to keep the greens green.

The grass is a salt-tolerant variety

that can be watered with a mixture of seawater

and fresh tropical rain.

That, in turn, frees up the groundskeepers

to concentrate on other essential maintenance,

like moving all 18 holes to new positions every single day.

People love to play our golf course, right?

So we have a lot of repeat guests.

And so, if you play a couple of days in a row,

sometimes it's more fun to play a different pin location.

[Narrator] Even though the course is constantly changing,

there are some hazards golfers must face every time.

The course's designer, famous golfer Jack Nicklaus,

dynamited this lakeshore to create a tricky approach.

[golf ball thwacks] [gentle pensive music]

[water splashing]

We're on hole number 16, our signature hole. Par three.

Our island green effect here with Lake Cunningham.

It's really difficult to judge the distance here.

Let's see if this one will be one

that goes in the lake or...

And it is.

That's probably the 10th to 12th ball

for the day in the water.

[Narrator] But their loss is one mega-resort chef's gain.

It's just something that's fun to do on my days off.

I love golf and I like the outdoors

and when I golfed here the first couple of times,

I saw all the golf balls going in the water,

and just thought it was a shame.

This is only probably 10 minutes' work.

Can see there's a lot of different balls everybody's using,

from the colored ones

to the ones that look like little footballs.

So, any opportunity I can get to get some balls.

[gentle playful music]

[Narrator] Another clever design feature

of the golf course,

it conceals a huge piece of vital infrastructure.

The resort's own 15-megawatt power station.

Incredibly, this is just a backup

in case the main supply ever fails.

If we was to lose power now and you were in this room,

you'd hear a big bang,

then all of a sudden, a couple of minutes later,

you'd hear clack, clack, clack!

Which means the switches are turning over

and we have generator power.

So, in the event that something happens,

we're always ready to go.

Whether on mains or generator,

the mega-resort draws around nine megawatts of electricity.

That's equivalent to more than 25,000 British homes.

It's just another extraordinary system

that keeps the mega-resort humming 24/7.

Monthly, our electricity bill here is pretty high.

It's a massive, massive number. It's huge.

That's what I can say, it's huge. It's huge.

Big number, you know.

[Narrator] From the golf course greens

to the white sand beach,

from the wildlife to the wild parties,

and from the luxury suites to the high-stakes casino,

this is an investment of billions,

all meant to capture that elusive thing,

us, and our hard-earned holiday money.

We want people to have a good time.

We understand that island life is one to be enjoyed.

We understand that life is to be enjoyed.

We try our best to help people to do that as much as we can.

[Narrator] Over the next year,

Baha Mar will host close to one million guests.

This one mega-resort could soon make up 12%

of the Bahamas' entire economy.

And, as big as it is, soon there'll be more.

Right next door,

a huge new water park is under construction,

ready to open in 2021.

This resort is about to get even more mega.

[gentle majestic music]