Cultivating Excellence: How Atlantis' School of Wine & Beverage Arts Is Investing in the Future of Bahamian Hospitality

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas

Guests notice the perfectly prepared dish, the attentive service, the wine list curated just for them. What they rarely see is the education behind it, the years of training

that turn a server into someone who can guide a diner through a 200-bottle list with ease.

At Atlantis Paradise Island, that education now has a name: the School of Wine & Beverage Arts, a structured training initiative built to close a knowledge gap among the resort's food and beverage managers. But according to Director of Food & Beverage David Vegazo, the program is about far more than vintages and varietals, it's a leadership pipeline.

"The school was born because we saw that there was a gap of knowledge in the wine and beverage side for our managers," Vegazo said.

"Wine, especially in fine dining restaurants, is a big part of not only the financial side, but the service side. Having the right tools, the right service and the right knowledge is crucial to increase guest satisfaction and, obviously, to drive revenue."

Born From a Gap

Wine training had long existed across Atlantis' restaurants, but it varied venue to venue. Vegazo wanted something structured, and he wanted it to start with the managers running the resort's heaviest wine programs.

The stakes felt different in the Bahamas than they had elsewhere in his career.

"In the Bahamas, you're not a wine-making country,” he said.

“Obviously here, It's not something that you're born with.”

Vegazo, who is from Spain, leads a team of instructors from Italy and South Africa, places where wine is less a subject to study than a fact of daily life.

"You grew up drinking wine, and you get attached to it," he said.

"We said, 'Why don't we share this knowledge with our local managers? They

never had this opportunity, so let's make it happen for them.'"

More Than a Wine List

The curriculum reflects that intent. Lessons go beyond grape varieties and regional maps into the business side of hospitality, inventory control, pricing, sales technique, guest psychology. "We're not only doing wine tastings and wine knowledge," Vegazo said.

"Our next lesson, for example, is more on the marketing and the financial side of wine. How do you run your inventories? What techniques could you use to upsell?" Confidence is the other pillar. A manager who can speak about wine with authority, who can read a

table and suggest the right bottle without hesitation, changes the entire arc of a guest's meal. "It's to improve their day-to-day operations, how they approach wine sales, how they approach guest inquiries, and to be able to speak more confidently about wine,"

Vegazo said.

The Sommelier's Long Game

Vegazo's own career is the template. He spent three years as a sommelier, not because he wanted to stay one, but because he understood it as a necessary apprenticeship.

"I never wanted to be a sommelier full time," he said, "But I did work for three years, because my goal was to become general manager of a restaurant." He sees the same arc ahead for his students."They will be the future general managers of Atlantis,"he said.

The program brings in visiting winemakers for masterclasses, producers who can speak firsthand to the soil, the harvest, the decisions behind a label. For Vegazo, that exposure is the point. "When you learn about wine, you learn about history, about geography, about culture," he said."That's very exciting."

A Responsibility

Vegazo has built his career across Spain, London, and now the Bahamas, and he

frames that mobility as an obligation rather than a credential.

"I think especially when you've been lucky enough to have exposure to other markets, travel and different cultures, you have that responsibility to somehow make an impact in the community," he said. That's the real ambition behind the School of Wine & Beverage Arts. Vegazo isn't just training better servers or chasing higher wine sales, though both are happening. He's building a bench of future leaders, equipping them with skills that travel beyond Atlantis into retail, brand representation and the wider wine trade.

In an industry built on memory and moment, knowledge is the ingredient guests never see, and, increasingly, the one Atlantis is betting on.