Sandals Emerald Bay: Great Exuma’s Closed Resort, the Beaches Conversion and Alternatives

A traveler scrolling through photos of Great Exuma’s long, pale beach and its golf course on the water often lands on the name Sandals Emerald Bay, then wonders why the booking doors seem shut. The resort closed in 2024 and is being rebuilt as a Beaches Resort for families. For couples who want a Sandals stay in the Bahamas in the meantime, Nassau has another one.

What is Sandals Emerald Bay?

Sandals Emerald Bay is a resort on Great Exuma that closed its doors on August 15, 2024, and is now being completely transformed into a Beaches Resort. It is not a place you can book a room today, and the company has not announced when it will welcome guests again.

The change is a real change of character, not a fresh coat of paint. Where the Sandals name meant a resort for couples, Beaches means a family-friendly resort with vacation experiences for guests of all ages. Grandparents, parents, teenagers and small children are the audience now, and the buildings, the pools and the dining are being reworked around them.

What stays the same

The setting is the draw, and it is not changing. The new Beaches Resort on Great Exuma will keep the same dream beach and the spectacular golf course that made the property known to travelers. If you remember a stay here, or have seen the photographs, the shoreline and the fairways are the parts you can expect to recognize.

That continuity matters if you are choosing between Great Exuma and another island. The place itself, a long stretch of sand beside the water with a course laid out nearby, remains the reason to look at this corner of the island.

What is new

The family focus shows in the additions. The Beaches Resort will feature enhanced kids and teen clubs, a water playground and new dining options. Separate clubs for younger children and for teenagers suggest days built so that each age group has its own corner, with time together at the beach and the table.

A water playground is the kind of feature that changes how a resort day runs for families with small children, giving them somewhere to spend a morning that is not the open sea. The new dining options round out a plan that is clearly written for groups of mixed ages rather than for two.

When will it reopen?

The reopening date of the Beaches Resort on Great Exuma has not been announced. The company has said it will communicate the date later. Until it does, any date you find on a blog, a forum or a third-party site is a guess, and it is wiser to plan the trip around something that is open now.

If you are drawn to the Exumas regardless, Great Exuma works as a destination apart from any single resort, with its own towns, beaches and boat trips. The sections that follow cover where the island sits and how people reach it.

What is included?

For now, nothing is included at Emerald Bay because the resort is closed, and the inclusions of the future Beaches Resort have not been published beyond its kids and teen clubs, water playground and new dining options. The all-inclusive details that travelers search for belong today to the Sandals resort in Nassau.

What the Beaches Resort has announced

The announced features are about family life. Enhanced kids and teen clubs give children and teenagers their own programs, and the water playground gives younger guests a place to splash. New dining options complete the list. Nothing more detailed about meals, drinks or activities has been announced, so it is better not to assume the Sandals formula carries over unchanged.

What carries over is the setting: the same beach and the same golf course. Everything else about the stay will be defined when the company shares its reopening plans.

What Sandals Royal Bahamian includes in Nassau

Sandals Royal Bahamian in Nassau, recently renovated, is the alternative the company points to, and it is the only Sandals resort in the Bahamas. It is an adults-only resort designed for couples, which makes it a different kind of stay from the family resort Emerald Bay is becoming. It also comes with an offshore island of its own.

Guests can enjoy fine dining at 10 specialty restaurants, and unlimited cocktails and premium liquors are included. On the water, a variety of water sports and free PADI scuba diving are part of the stay. The offshore private island gives the resort a second setting beyond its own shoreline.

Swim-up rooms and butler service

Swim-up rooms are available at Sandals Royal Bahamian, which means stepping from your room straight into the water. The highest level of swim-up rooms includes Elite Butler service and private Rolls Royce airport transfers, a step up for travelers who want the arrival to be part of the occasion.

Which resort suits whom is simple to say. Couples who want an adults-only, all-inclusive stay now should look at Nassau. Families who want the Great Exuma beach and golf course will have to wait for the Beaches Resort to open.

Where is it?

Sandals Emerald Bay sits on Great Exuma, the largest island in the Exuma district of the Bahamas. Great Exuma is a long, narrow island, and the resort’s closest reference for most travelers is the island’s airport and the town of George Town.

Great Exuma and the Exuma district

Exuma is a district made up of over 365 islands and cays. Great Exuma, the largest of them, is 37 mi in length and covers 61 sq mi, while Little Exuma beside it covers 11 sq mi. The whole chain stretches 130 mi, so a stay on Great Exuma is a stay on one island among a very large scattering of cays.

George Town on Great Exuma was founded in 1793 and remains the island’s main town. On Little Exuma, the Tropic of Cancer crosses Pelican Beach, which is why it also goes by the name Tropic of Cancer Beach, a small geographic curiosity for a beach stop. The population of Exuma more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, reaching 6,928 in 2010.

Getting to Great Exuma

Exuma International Airport serves Great Exuma and George Town. It is a public airport near Moss Town, northwest of George Town, sitting at just 9 ft above sea level. The airport has direct flights from Nassau, Miami, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte and Toronto.

By airline, American Eagle flies to Charlotte and Miami, and American Airlines offers seasonal flights to Charlotte. Delta Connection flies to Atlanta, and Air Canada offers seasonal flights to Toronto. Bahamasair flies to Nassau and Rock Sound, with seasonal flights to Fort Lauderdale. For private aircraft, Odyssey Aviation operates an FBO with direct access to the ramp.

Where the Nassau alternative sits

Sandals Royal Bahamian is in Nassau, on a different island from Great Exuma, so the two resorts are not neighbors and a stay at one does not put you near the other. Boat travel from Nassau to the Northern Exuma Cays takes approximately one hour, but that is a trip to the northern cays, not to Great Exuma.

Good to know before you go

The U.S. State Department rates the Bahamas Level 2, “Exercise increased caution”, and says most crime occurs in Nassau on New Providence and in Freeport on Grand Bahama.

The main thing to know is that Emerald Bay is closed and no reopening date exists yet, so a trip built around it has nothing to stand on. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, so check those dates when you pick dates for any island stay in the Bahamas. If your plan is a Sandals vacation now, Royal Bahamian in Nassau is the one to look at, and if your plan is Great Exuma, the island’s beaches, the Tropic of Cancer stop on Little Exuma and the town of George Town stand on their own.

Sources

Sandals Emerald Bay Exuma (official site) (https://www.sandals.com/emerald-bay/), checked October 10, 2026
Sandals Resorts, Bahamas (https://www.sandals.com/bahamas/), checked October 10, 2026
Wikipedia, Exuma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exuma), checked October 10, 2026
U.S. Department of State, The Bahamas Travel Advisory, Level 2 (https://travel.state.gov/), checked October 10, 2026
NOAA National Hurricane Center, Climatology (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/), checked October 10, 2026