(Bloomberg) -- This is the first installment of Bloomberg Pursuits Amenity Watch, where we look at the exciting (and sometimes ridiculous) perks that luxury hotels are coming up with to entice people back out into the world.
You've heard of overwater villas … but a beach on stilts? Dan Behm, owner of the new adults-only Bocas Bali resort in Bocas del Toro, Panama, is betting you've never come across one of those before.
The former tech exec-turned-hotelier says that his “aerial beach” is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. “I'd heard of projects in the Netherlands where people were building beaches on floating pontoons,” Behm tells Bloomberg. This isn't that.
The wide, dock-like structure is filled with sand and supported by 40-foot-tall concrete-filled PVC pilings that have been bored into the ocean floor using high-pressure water jets. On its edge, a series of steps descend into the 30-foot deep waters, sort of like walking right into the deep end of the pool.
Above ground, the beach is meant to feel just like the real deal almost anywhere else, complete with lounge service and a food truck; a sophisticated (and invisible) drainage system prevents water-polluting runoff. Although unlike your average beach, given the immediate depth, guests can grab snorkeling gear and see everything from nurse sharks to stingrays right near the steps without having to swim out.
Behm comes across as a classic Type A, competitive professional—the kind of entrepreneurial problem-solver that left his Michigan-based tech company Open Systems Technologies Inc after building it up from a $5 million hardware reseller to a $160 million IT business in 2015. He's drawn by the idea of “firsts.”
He was interested in opening a hotel in Bocas del Toro not out of some long-held connection to the place, but because he saw opportunity to build overwater bungalows—the kind you find in the Maldives or Tahiti—within an easy flying radius of the U.S. The property, which opened in Sept. 2021, offers 16 solar-powered accommodations made from teak wood, all flanking a tiny outlying island that's ringed with mangroves and coral. Rates start at around $1,000 a night, and getting there requires a one-hour flight from Panama City, plus a 15-minute boat ride.
“In tech I could always use my creativity to create things, but you could never see them. This time I wanted to create something you could see, with features you couldn't find anywhere else,” he says, as a way of explaining why he'd purchase a nine-acre parcel of land with 88 acres of mangrove and roughly three miles of Caribbean Sea-facing shoreline lacking that one key amenity for an island resort: a stretch of sand. “But you can build one,” he says he was told.
Related: Luxury Resorts Are Booming Along Panama's Coast
The design process for Behm's beach was a yearslong process, with sustainability as a goal. “To introduce sand in areas where it doesn't occur naturally, we feared it would disturb the coral and the mangroves,” he says. And building a floating option on pontoons was prohibitively expensive.
Not to discount the carbon footprint of having to import all the materials—the sand and palm trees came from other parts of Panama, the green quartz steps were flown in from India—Daniel Cáceres, an environmental auditor who has either assessed or helped create some 300 eco-friendly projects throughout Panama, provided guidance on the least invasive way to approach the project.
With the beach done, Behm is looking ahead to his next projects for Bocas Bali, which include elaborate treehouses designed by Balinese bamboo architect Elora Hardy and a string of botanical gardens, a dozen or so “secret” ones and one “massive” showpiece. That five-year garden project is a somewhat unconventional choice—that is, introducing non-native species to a pristine place—when you consider the unglamorous but sustainability-oriented investments already made to the island resort, such as rainwater catchment systems and gray water treatment facilities.
But Behm is undeterred. He wants to introduce more color to the landscape, he says. “And by introducing new plants we are also attracting a ton more hummingbirds and butterflies.”
Ecologically speaking, he continues, “We truly believe we are giving more back than we are taking.”
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