Despite the title of my article, there’s nothing little about Mount Cinnamon Hotel in Grenada. Yes, compared to some resorts in the Caribbean, this beautiful resort is relatively small. Mount Cinnamon is a 50-bedroom resort ideal for romantic getaways. The spacious one-to-three-bedroom villas offer the perfect accommodation for families or groups of friends. At Mount Cinnamon “boutique” translates to guaranteed quality and a special, luxury experience where the staff warmly greets you on arrival and remembers your name throughout your stay.

Mount Cinnamon is also big at heart and the driving beat can be accredited to the owner, Barry Collymore. Barry is a special man and a doer with a heartfelt mission to change how we think about hospitality, tourism, and development—not just at Mount Cinnamon, but hopefully all of the Caribbean.

A Conversation with Barry Collymore, Owner of Mount Cinnamon and Founder of WISH Grenada

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I was born in Barbados. I have had a career in media as a journalist, PR, working for St. George’s University, in government with the Prime Minister of Grenada, and a career in education teaching business at St. George’s University. Plus, I’ve worked on development with Peter de Savary (former owner of Mount Cinnamon who passed away in 2022) and chairman of the tourism authority, Pure Grenada.

I have my own real estate development company where we work on several projects in Grenada and also the founder of WISH Grenada,? which is in partnership with Cornell University and the Culinary Institute of America. I am very proud of that. My interest is to do both the bricks-and-mortar side as well as the human side of development. One of my proudest achievements is being a father to my son, Zachary. He’s my best friend. Being there for him and showing him the right example is important to me.

Sustainable Tourism

What makes Mount Cinnamon Unique?

Mount Cinnamon is one of the most unique properties in the Caribbean because of its location. It’s not just on the beach, but over the beach. You also get the most wonderful views of the sea with the backdrop of St. George’s, one of the oldest towns in the Caribbean. We’re on the beautiful Grand Anse beach which is just over a mile long. You can see the sailing ships and yachts entering St. George’s, and beyond that a view of the beautiful and protected mountain range at the center of the island.

We are boutique. My favorite part is having family travelers because parents are introducing their children to travel. To me, that is sustainability than anything else.

What is Mount Cinnamon’s “Grenada Menu?”

We are creating what I call a “Grenada Menu” where we are using everything that we have on the island. Everything is chef-curated and organic, nothing is mass produced. We avoid buffets, and 90% of our food is sourced locally. Probably the only things that aren’t locally sourced are beef and anything to do with dairy. We have a range of seafood and poultry, and all of the herbs and spices are from the island. Even some of the salt is harvested from Saline Island, a salt pond in Grenada. It’s truly a boutique hotel paradise for someone who wants to have a quality vacation.

What does “farm-to-table” mean to you?

I think that in Grenada people have always eaten from farm-to-table. However, the problem lies in restaurants breaking that philosophy. Our traditional view of restaurants globally is that you have to create a French menu in the Caribbean, or the menu must have, for example, Caesar Salad and Yorkshire Pudding. We’re saying “no” to imported ingredients. We can use local ingredients and create our own menu because we have the quality of ingredients and chefs to create meals that are indeed unique.

The fish served is caught on the same day and then brought directly to our kitchen. Or we will use rosemary and tarragon which are spices grown at Mount Cinnamon as a substitute for vanilla in ice cream. Farm to table is about using the very best of the local ingredients to create a menu based not on what people are doing in other countries, but on what you can do in your own country.

Is educating the guests key to understanding the Grenada Menu?

Education is important and what you do [writers] is key. However, the visitors are probably the most willing participants. We have not done a good enough job of elevating our local food and ingredients. It’s certainly happening here, and the advantages are that Grenada is not a flat coral island where you have to import everything. It has a rich agrarian culture and tradition. We have extremely fertile soil to plant many things even on our resort. Our local goat meat is as good as Australian lamb. It’s using what you have and building flavor profiles with naturally good ingredients.

When you make high-quality local meals, the guests love it.

What’s New at Mount Cinnamon?

We have really elevated the standard of food and are now serving some of the best food in the Caribbean. I say that not just because of the skills of the chef and the great food and beverage team, but because of the quality of the ingredients. We are sourcing our ingredients from local organic farms, and we do our own planting on the resort’s land. We’re also planting at Tufton Hall, which is an organic plantation on the north of the island. The quality of our ingredients along with the fresh seafood is remarkable.

Attention to Detail and Service

We pay great attention to detail and service. For example, there is a special welcome for every guest, and we try to remember every guest by name. Our goal is to create a unique holiday package that leads to unique memories for every guest that stays at Mount Cinnamon. We try to ensure that they have the best time, relax, and have great experiences. In that regard, we have updated the spa and gym that has Peloton equipment, plus some work on the beach club. There’s also a dedicated vehicle service for people who find it challenging or don’t want to walk down the hill to the beach.

Butler Service

As of this season, we will be launching our butler service. All guests will receive this service as part of their stay. We already have a special airport arrival area (private terminal) with pick-up, and a team is ready to greet you upon arrival. With the butler service, guests are taken directly to their room and check-in is done there. If you want, the butler will unpack for you and then help you plan your vacation. Anything that you don’t have pre-booked we will do. If we have your contact information ahead of time, the butler can make suggestions and arrangements. He/she will be available via WhatsApp or other means of communication to answer questions or make the arrangements.

What you have then is a vacation specialist on the island who can plan, make suggestions, and bookings. Also, the butler service is a DMC (destination management company) that will curate your tours, so they are more personalized. We can arrange that you eat outdoors rather than in a restaurant. For example, when you visit the waterfalls the meal can be taken to you there. At the end of your stay, the butler will bring your suitcases down and wish you a safe journey.

Is the butler service available to any guest or is it an additional package?

It’s available to any guest and is opt-in because we realize that some guests want to be left alone. You can also choose what you want. Some people may want help with excursions, but not want someone unpacking for them.

Why is it important for you that guests leave the beach and discover other parts of Grenada?

One of the things we do is encourage guests to leave the property by promoting tours. We’d like them to see other parts of the island and immerse themselves in the ‘food story’. The food that you are eating wasn’t grown on the beach, but in the interior of the island where we have some of the most fertile volcanic soil in the world. When we tell the story, the tourists will go tell the story.

We also like to promote yachting, sailing, and diving so visitors can explore where the seafood comes from.

At Mount Cinnamon you are looking out every day at a scenic panorama of sand, sea, and lush green mountains. It’s absolutely gorgeous!

Additionally, we have paid careful attention to green spaces and have planted lots of trees and flowers that make it a community. We want people to feel at home and in a very special place.

Conscious Development: Constructing without Destructing

What is the most valuable lesson that you learned from your predecessor Peter de Savary?

In terms of what you do in life, it’s not what you say no to, but what you say yes to. If you do something badly many times you can’t undo it. He always believed in leaving a valuable legacy in whatever he did and in creating opportunities for others. As we develop Mount Cinnamon it’s not just about the hotel, but the people who work here, the suppliers, and most importantly, the country of Grenada is in service to your employees, customers, and country.

That’s why WISH is so important because we are focused on building people. We give out over a thousand scholarships per year. The idea is to build a highly competent and well-trained Grenada and Caribbean workforce.

What is your hope for future development and foreign investment in Grenada?

I think that development is needed but has two sides. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is important. We have to keep Grenada as an FDI-friendly country.

All great societies were built not just on their own strengths but on their ability to take the very best from other cultures and curate it for the best interest of their society.

I am a big proponent of foreign investment.

I also believe that you must have fertile soil for foreign direct investment that helps build the institutional, educational, and opportunity capacities of the people. FDI should help develop the people and not be an imposition. It should create jobs, educational, and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Tourism is an Export

I believe that tourism is the Caribbean’s greatest export. We market and export our way of life. The more that we can do to help people create businesses through development, or educational opportunities like WISH. Instead of importing labor, we train locals so hotels can employ them.

The other thing that I think is important is that foreign direct investment meets environmental and social guidelines. You cannot destroy the very thing that you are marketing. So, hotel, real estate, and tourism developers should be the biggest proponents of environmental management like ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and all of those standards.

This is why Mount Cinnamon is enrolled and is a proud member of Green Globes. We believe that in the same environment that we market, we cannot do harm. If anything, we should enhance it. That means, for example, keeping the beaches clean from litter and recycling if possible.

The Caribbean needs to wave the flag because we, as tiny islands, are not the ones that are hurting the earth’s ecosystems. We don’t have any big polluters or chemical plants. Grenada has more trees per capita and so do many of the other small islands. Yet we can become a huge climate victim. Sea level rise could wipe out our beaches. Atypically rainy Januarys, Februarys, and Decembers can seriously impact our ability to have a tourism product. So, we depend on a stable climate in the Caribbean where the dry months remain dry. If we were to get rain all year round it would be seriously damaging.

I believe that Grenada can set a good example. There are not too many things that are spoiled here — we have a blank canvas.

Path to the Future: Scholarships for Success

What is WISH Grenada?

The program is WISH Grenada (West Indies School of Hospitality). We also have an agreement with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association. Candidates can register there as well. You can sign up for programs at E-Cornell University and the Culinary Institute of America. Then through donations from myself and Mount Cinnamon, we fund scholarships for anyone in the hospitality workforce in Grenada and now the Caribbean to be able to study at Cornell.

What is the vetting process?

At the moment it is all scholarship based. The vetting and accountability process is through the employer. We create learning paths for different organizations through the employer. Then the employer helps to keep the people who enroll accountable. It becomes a part of their whole employment term of service to the company. We help the employer give back to their employees.

My Wish

I chose to stay at Mount Cinnamon for its proximity to the beach and views, food, spacious villa, and commitment to ecotourism. Little did I know that this summer vacation retreat would inspire me to write two articles that address something important to me as a travel writer. First to encourage others to rethink how we travel. Tourism is a take-and-give partnership. As visitors to someone else’s home, we should make a conscious decision to support locally owned, small businesses. Second, let’s not destroy (as Barry noted) what has been gifted to us – the earth and its natural resources. With that in mind, construction can’t mean destruction.

Barry taught me something else too. Tourism is a country’s export and rather than import service professionals, train your own people and ensure that businesses of all sizes reap the benefits of tourism. Finally, small countries like Grenada depend on foreign investment. The partnership between investor and the country’s decision-makers must ensure that there is both a business and human side of development.

My wish is that as communicators, we continue to discover, learn, and share stories about doers like Barry. Change is near.

To stay at Mount Cinnamon Hotel, visit: www.mountcinnamongrenadahotel.com/.