Winter-spring discount at new Virgin Islands resort

Get ‘em while they’re hot – if not exactly cheap: Booking now at a new resort, Scrub Island Resort in the British Virgin Islands and which is still under construction, will save you some serious coin when the upscale resort opens Jan. 3.
Scrub Island, a free five-minute ferry ride from Trellis Island on Tortola for guests, and just across from Little and Great Camanoe islands, offers early-booking rates of $450-$1,175 per night for ocean-view rooms and suites, and up to $2,500 per night for very private hillside villas dotting the hills away from the resort proper. Booking must be made by Aug. 31 for travel dates of Jan. 3 through April 30. After that, rates shoot up: $650 and up for rooms, and upwards of $4,000 per night for villas.
The resort, which will have 26 guest rooms and 26 one- and two-bedroom suites, as well as a 31 two- to five-bedroom villas at build out in September of next year, sprawls over 230 previously undeveloped acres; legend has it pirates found it easy to put in here and scrub their boat hulls clean, hence the name. The island had been home to Donovan’s Reef for several years, a tiny bar/restaurant run by the McManus family of Pennsylvania, named for the patriarch’s favorite John Wayne movie.
If you’ve got the cash, it may be worth it – once completed. The resort in mid-July had a lot of work yet to be done, but the developers, Mainsail Development of Tampa promised all the main rooms and suites, and some of the villas, not to mention a complex of four restaurants, four white-sand beaches and 60 deep-water slips, some capable of berthing boats up to 150-feet long, will be good to go.
Scrub Island consists of two large chunks of land connected by a thin strip of land, with the smaller part housing the resort proper. The other piece, Big Scrub, as it’s called, is open for private ownership with 50 house lots permitted from 1.5 to 7 acres.
It would seem to be a huge leap of faith in a faltering economy, but Mainsail president Joe Collier said the wheels had been in motion since 2003, long before the economy tanked. He said sales have been brisk and interest strong in the resort, which tourism officials said is the first major development in the entire BVI in at least 15 years. Reportedly, $150 million has been invested in the resort.
Amenities include the usual found in an upscale resort, full-service spa and fitness center, shops, lagoon pool with waterfalls and swim-up bar, dive shop, boat rentals, fishing, scuba and snorkeling charters, motorized water sports, and exquisitely appointed rooms. Suites have Wolf ranges and hoods, SubZero refrigerators, stone flooring and wood-beamed ceilings.
And they include the not-so-usual: Go anywhere on the island with your guest-room phone and feel the need for a burger and beer where you sit looking over the Atlantic Ocean on one side or the Caribbean Sea on the other, and they’ll find you there, even if you don’t know where there is: Phones come equipped with GPS tracking systems.
Another unusual feature, according to general manager William Lee: Cameras mounted on some nesting boxes of the island’s various birds of prey will broadcast to guest rooms, so you can keep an eye on what they’re having for dinner as you have yours.

Posted by Paul E. Kandarian, Globe correspondent

Photo of the view from veranda of a suite on Scrub Island for The Boston Globe by Paul E. Kandarian