Ashford W. Meikle, Staff Reporter 
TOURISM MOGUL and hotel magnate Gordon 'Butch' Stewart has set his sights on a massive expansion of the Beaches Hotel on the island of Providenciales (Provo) in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) and where he he will be exporting the highly successful Royal Plantation Hotel concept, the first outside Jamaica.
"When I saw the beach, I said instantly, 'this is part of our future.' It really is an extraordinary island. When we came here in '94 there was only one flight a day on American Airlines out of Miami and there were about 4,000 people in Provo and today it has about 17,000 or 18,000," Stewart explained to this newspaper in a recent interview.
PROPERTY
The property is situated on the famous 14 mile-long Grace Bay beach which Stewart enthused is "probably the best beach in the world. It's an extraordinary beach, facing west. You know all good beaches in the Caribbean faces west or north west."
As is the norm on the TCI, the Beaches resort caters to an upscale clientele. It has some 466 bedrooms of which 35 per cent are suites
Part of the 14-mile-long Grace Bay Beach on the Turks and Caicos Islands where the Italian Village will be located.
