Abandoned St Kitts & Nevis: Derelict Hotel, Charlestown, Nevis

Nevis is a small, beautiful island with a population of around 13,000 people spread across the stunning landscape, sharing the pristine beaches with the thousands of tourists that flock to the island each year. Most tourism is focussed on the larger island of St Kitts, but there’s still a spattering of hotels on Nevis. This particular accommodation won’t be accepting reservations any time soon, as despite its prime location on the outskirts of the capital, Charlestown, and overlooking stunning white-sand beaches, it has been abandoned since 1989.

Hugo was a category 5 hurricane that inflicted widespread destruction across the northeastern Caribbean and the Southeastern United States in September 1989. The storm caused $45 million in damage to St. Kitts and Nevis, leaving around 20% of the population homeless. It also cut off electricity supplies, contaminated water sources, and led to severe food shortages. One of the many buildings destroyed was this hotel, according to locals. This is about the only information about the abandoned hotel that we have; locals report it was family-owned and one of the first hotels on Nevis, but the rest of its history remains a mystery.

Of all the Caribbean islands I visited on this trip, I felt the safest on Nevis- locals were very friendly and welcoming, so I had no problem with walking across the beach alone to poke about and take some photos. The first building of the hotel complex was double storied, and laid out as chalets. Inside was mostly bare, with a few tiled bathrooms remaining intact and rubble littering the main rooms. The uninterrupted sea view would have been a welcome sight to wake up to when the hotel was open, with a large window at the end of each suite.

Overall there were around five separate buildings across the site, with a few more clusters of chalet-type accomodation, and one central building that seemed to be a cafe or bar, with a sheltered veranda overlooking the sea. Empty, rotten wooden windows framed the stunning blue sky and sea from every room, this was beautiful abandonment in the middle of paradise. The hotel complex was mostly free from vandalism, the only damage and decay from the hurricane itself and nature doing its thing over the past three and a half decades. With little known history, I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking…