Billy McFarland’s Last Chance? Honduras Pop-Up Fyre Fest Backed By Concert Industry Vet

“I will be looked at as either the smartest man or the dumbest man in the room,” says Heath Miller, owner of the Coral View Beach Resort, after recently partnering up with Billy McFarland, the infamous brain behind the failed Fyre Festival in 2017, for Fyre Hotels. 

While the dysfunction around Fyre Festival is well-documented (with two documentaries and countless articles, not to mention nearly three years in federal prison for McFarland), McFarland tried to revive the brand last year with Fyre Fest 2, slated to take place in Mexico. However, trouble brewed there, as well, and the festival was canceled and unable to fully get off the ground. McFarland revealed in April that he was selling the IP, and Miller connected with him for a smaller event to test the waters and hopefully prove the festival could be a serious concept.

Miller, who owns the Coral View Utila in Utila, Honduras, offered his resort for a branded Fyre event. The Fyre Coral View pop-up will take place Sept. 3-10, and promises deep dives, street food, bonfires and more. Attendees will be provided a private room at the beachfront hotel, day boat excursions, guided hikes across the island, airport transfers from Roatán and more. He and McFarland first met at a show in 2015, and notes that they teamed up for a few VIP packages back then, with McFarland always paying them without problem.

“Last February, my wife and I were in New York, and we saw Billy was hosting some pop-up get-together dinner,” Miller says. The pair of them went, Miller feeling they could come out of the meal with a good story at the very least. “Billy and I had spoken multiple times in the past during his Magnises time period (2015-2017), and he clearly remembered me, as he approached me when he first entered the restaurant. I was like, ‘Dude, if you ever want to do Fyre Festival or something on Utila, I own a hotel there, and we’ve had festivals on the island before.’ Two weeks later, he called me and said, ‘Let’s talk about it.’”

Prior to moving to Honduras to oversee the Coral View Utila, Miller worked at Webster Hall and was talent buyer and president of Excess dB Entertainment. and Vice President of Concerts at Webster Hall from May 2011 to August 2017. During his tenure in 2016, the venue won Nightclub of the Year at the Pollstar Awards. 

Already, Miller has Utila’s mayor on board. The island often takes a backseat to the nearby Del Carmen, a bigger island that hosts the international airport and docks visiting cruise ships. By teaming up with Fyre, despite the brand’s infamy, Utila hopes the press brings a boost in tourism.

“I’m excited for the opportunity to have Utila play host to what will be a historic event – FYRE happening,” Alex E-Banks, Utila’s mayor, tells Pollstar. “This is our smaller pop-up event (not thousands of people) to set the stage for a larger Fyre Festival event in 2026. We’re giving Billy the chance to walk, not run, to keep our island and our community safe. With Coral Beach Resort’s owner, Heath Miller, with 20+ years of concert and event experience in the states and five years of running a business on utila, we feel confident to welcome the Greatest Party Utila has ever experienced.” 

Miller isn’t concerned about attendance, and notes the possibility of only 50 people paying to attend, with the rest being comps. The intention of the event is to remain small, the team wanting to ensure things can run smoothly before attempting a larger splash. “Right now they’re working on talent and guests on their end, but overall this is going to be a relatively small event,” Miller says. “We don’t need to do anything crazy and this isn’t a massive build-out. This is a pop-up style, smaller event.”

On the hotel’s end, Miller knows what steps he intends to take. 

“The first goal is selling out hotel rooms,” Miller says. “It’s only 24 hotel rooms. So, on the low end, we’ll have 50 paid people, but we’re expecting between 75 and 100 from the hotel end (per day). Then, we’ll decide if we’ll release any additional inventory to people who are here on the island or people staying at other hotels. And I know he’s going to have a lot of invited guests and guest list people, and I’m sure we’re going to have some press coming down to report on it, as well. Small and manageable is the key – I’m putting my reputation on the line, and we’re only offering what I know I can facilitate on my own, if I had to.”

The island’s population sits between 7,000 to 10,000 people depending on the time of year, and Miller notes the week Fyre Hotels is taking place is typically a slower time of the season for them. 

“The biggest potential challenges I’m worried about are power and weather,” Miller admits. “On the power side with the hotel itself, we have a backup generator on site. But we’ll still rent two generators, not only one, for offsite programming around the island and Water Cay, because I’ve seen people where they rent one generator and something goes wrong. Then, on the possibility of a bad weather situation, once we find our final numbers of how many people are going to actually end up on the event, which I expect no more than 500 people over the entire week on the high end, and 300 people max on any given day, inclusive of staff, talent and everything. Our rainy season starts in the middle of October, normally not this early in the year. Usually we’re hot and sweaty in August to Mid September – for the last five years, at least. We have indoor spaces around Utila that will be our weather backups.” 

While Fyre has a history, Miller isn’t too worried about what might happen if things go wrong. “My worst case scenario is everyone gets here and just has a normal vacation, and we refund the Fyre Coral View Pop-up difference price (the “lift” above the room rate) or we give them all the free alcohol, food and diving they want. There are options and this isn’t much different from what I do now, and have done since I was 16.

“Transparency is the key for the Fyre Coral View Pop-Up succeeding,” he continues. “With agents, managers, the industry as a whole and most importantly the consumer.  This is either Billy McFarland’s last chance or his first Fyre success.”