The Line in the Sand

It's hard to keep a secret at work, especially when you work at the Corniche Hotel on Seven Mile Beach...

For decades the rich and famous have been flocking to the Corniche Hotel on Seven Mile Beach. It has a particular pride of place on a coveted spot, where the sand is perfect, the water looks like gin and the sunsets make passersby stop and take selfies.

But the Corniche was not built for the selfie generation. She is a grande-dame of a hotel and her owners and employees are struggling in a challenging market to keep her relevant to increasingly younger guests, who aren't used to her particular brand of private club luxury. And alas, her loyal following of glamorous guests are ageing and dying off. The movie stars, billionaires and socialites who can, continue to come. But even they are sporting new teeth, new faces and new joints.

You might expect the oldest hotel on the seven-mile stretch to be showing her age, look slightly tattered or be in need of a facelift, herself. This couldn't be further from the truth, and the Corniche has withstood natural disasters and the changing world around her far better than her neighbours. Connoisseurs of quality, beauty and great service know that she's an anachronism. She can hold her own against the high-rise hotel chains popping up to her North and South, but she won't survive much longer in the current tear-down and rebuild climate, the vultures circling and bulldozers revving their engines.

Is it time to submit to the change that the rest of the industry is embracing or stand their ground and dig their heels in the sand? Miss Lorna, the Corniche's beloved housekeeper and her peers might not love all the hard work, sacrifices and lost weekends that it has taken to get her here, but they wouldn't change anything for the world. They are invested, loyal and willing to do almost anything to keep the Corniche going.

So when the hotel's beloved regulars (and that one difficult guest who everyone hates) convene during a particularly slow week at the tail end of this year's hurricane season to enjoy the calm before high season kicks in (and a tropical depression to the Southeast), it brings long-standing problems, financial challenges, bad feelings, ill wishes and bad business to a peak (to say nothing of the dead body in the bathtub upstairs). Can the grande-dame survive one last scandal? It's up to a plucky and audacious little maid named Lorna, Sharon the loyal night manager, bartender Bobby and destitute owner Oren.

Some things are worth fighting for, but this week is making hurricane season look like smooth sailing.