The Bahamas on Screen: Bond's Casino Royale Resort and Nassau's Colonial Grande Dame

Ian Fleming loved the Caribbean, and the Bahamas has been one of Bond's favourite places to undress since Sean Connery's day. Two hotels carry most of the history.

The Ocean Club, A Four Seasons Resort: Casino Royale (2006), The Other Woman (2014)

In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig's Bond tracks a terrorist's associate, Alex Dimitrios, to a Bahamas resort, wins his Aston Martin DB5 from him at the poker table, and seduces his wife Solange, played by Caterina Murino. The resort is The Ocean Club on Paradise Island, founded in the 1960s and long one of the most exclusive resorts in the Caribbean. It became The Ocean Club, A Four Seasons Resort, after many years as a One&Only.

The resort returned to the screen in The Other Woman (2014), in which Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton discover they're all involved with the same man and follow him on his "business trip" to the Bahamas.

British Colonial, Nassau: Thunderball (1965), Never Say Never Again (1983)

The British Colonial has stood on the site of Nassau's old Fort Nassau since 1901, when it was built by Henry Flagler. It features in Thunderball, Sean Connery's fourth Bond film, much of which was shot in the Bahamas, and again in Never Say Never Again (1983), the unofficial remake of Thunderball that brought Connery back as 007 for the last time. Thunderball won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

The hotel spent years as the British Colonial Hilton, closed for a lengthy renovation, and reopened in December 2023 as the independent British Colonial.