Fyre Island was promoted as an exclusive, luxury party but what did it cost a small Caribbean island?
Just a week ago, streaming services Netflix and Hulu, released two documentaries about the Fyre Island scandal. Fyre Island was intended to be an ultra-exclusive music festival held in the Bahamian island of Great Exuma. It was supposed to feature groups like Major Lazer, and celebrities including Kendall Jenner and Chanel Iman promoted it. What was supposed to be the experience of a lifetime with rented yachts and mansions saw people resorting to sleeping in FEMA tents on soggy mattresses. Some concert-goers paid as much as $20,000 for all-inclusive festival packages.
While the documentary mostly highlighted the con-artistry of festival creator Billy McFarland and the amount of loss experienced by mostly rich millennial concert-goers, the conversation online post-documentary circled around the impact the festival had on Bahamians themselves. One restaurant caterer had spent up to $100,000 of her own personal savings to cover the cost of workers who were supposed to be paid for by the festival, not to mention the thousands of Bahamian labourers who remain uncompensated for the work they did in the months leading up to the festival.
Many may say that Bahamian local authorities should be blamed for not having the foresight to look into the background of the festival organisers. But like many islands where unemployment is extremely high and the economy is mostly based on tourism, the idea of hosting what seemed to be a tropical music festival that could rival the likes of Coachella, Lollapalooza or the Burning Man Festival, every year for the next five years, with major celebrity endorsements including by co-organiser Ja Rule, seemed to be exactly what Great Exuma needed to push its tourism portfolio.
Fyre Island should be a cautionary tale to all in the Caribbean. In the words of Shakespeare, “All that glitters, is not gold.” How many investors have come to our shores promising palatial resorts or exclusive experiences and great returns to our citizens to only flee in the end leaving hundreds of workers unpaid? If Fyre Island doesn’t leave Caribbean tourism officials hypervigilant for the next scheme, I don’t know what will.
Keithlin Caroo is the founder of Helen’s Daughters a Saint Lucian non-profit with a special focus on rural women’s economic development through improved market access, adaptive agricultural techniques, and capacity-building. It was formed in 2016 in a winning proposal for UN Women’s Empower Women Champions for Change Program. To learn more about the initiative, visit:
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