Brando Estate to Become Eco-Resort

TETIAROA, FRENCH POLYNESIA-Public access to this secluded atoll will resume in 2008, according to Tahiti Beachcomber SA, a resort company with plans to develop an eco-hotel here in cooperation with the estate of the late Marlon Brando, which owns the 12-island area located 26 miles north of Tahiti and protected by a coral reef.Tahiti Beachcomber representatives tell GlobeSt.com the atoll’s previous public accommodations, Tetiaroa Village, closed when Brando died last year, as did the associated airstrip. The new resort will include 30 luxury villas and be on the same island, Motu Onetahi. Tahiti Beachcomber CEO Richard Bailey says that in keeping with Brando’s wishes it will be the atoll’s only hotel. The rest of the atoll will be set aside as a private natural preserve, he says. The estimated cost of the project has not yet been released.”The eco-hotel will be … energy-autonomous and built with natural materials, it will rest lightly on its environment and be nearly invisible from the water,” says Bailey. “It will showcase the latest in renewable energy technologies, including some we are already employing in our new hotel in Bora Bora, which Marlon had promised to inaugurate; we worked together on this project for three years before he died.”Marlon Brando purchased a 99-year leasehold of Tetiaroa in 1965 after falling in love with it and his co-star, Tarita, while filming ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ in French Polynesia. The atoll’s only inhabitant is Teihotu Brando, the son the two had together, and the Brando estate now owns the atoll outright, according to Tahiti Beachcomber representatives. Bailey owns the trio of InterContinental Resorts French Polynesia: InterContinental Resort Tahiti; InterContinental Le Moana Resort Bora Bora; and InterContinental Resort and Spa Moorea. Bailey and his company, Tahiti Beachcomber SA, which purchased two of the resorts in 1998 and then the third, in Bora Bora, in 1999, will open a fourth hotel, InterContinental Resort and Thalasso-Spa Bora Bora, in 2006.