The Tribune

Family Island hoteliers believe an aggressive marketing approach has helped increase tourist arrivals by 14.7 per cent year-over-year for the 2014 first quarter.

The figures were revealed at a recent Board meeting of Bahamas Out Islands Promotion Board directors. The Board’s executive director, Shavonne Darville, said: “March and April tend to be extremely good months in tourism, and so everyone is buoyant at this time because occupancies have been good.

“Our room nights sold in terms of hotel properties up until April were up by 10 per cent, so it’s something to celebrate,” she added.

“We have seen a mixed strategy in terms of the Out Islands. This is in terms of both raising strategies in occupancy rates and raising average daily rates (ADR) and, in some cases, some properties are sacrificing occupancy for rate.

“With that said, we’ve seen an increase to date that we can report to members that, as of the end of April, we had a 14 per cent increase of levees recorded. That is despite that, to date, we still have 20 members not reporting for April as yet.”

Ms Darville said average occupancy rates among Family Island hotels have increased from 32 per cent to 43 per cent.

However, she added that the Board still had much work to be done. “We realise that there is a challenge being an archipelago....... It really is difficult for the Out Islands to replicate Nassau and Grand Bahama in all of the islands, and that is something we as a country continue to struggle with in determining which island receives more priority than others,” Ms Darville said.

“As a result, there are definitely more structural improvements to be made on basically all of the Family Islands, some more desperately than others. These structural improvements do end up impacting the ability to deliver a certain tourism product.

“But one thing we do excel in is our service level. We’ve been known for it. Quite a number of Family Island resorts have shown up in Trip Advisor, and quite a number of the properties have received certificates for excellence for 2014.”

Ms Darville said that because of budget constraints, officials and industry partners have had to become creative and “make every penny count”.

“Because of that we have had to engage in public partnerships as well as other private partnerships in order to do endeavours so that we can get further exposure. We recently partnered with the Ministry of Tourism and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC),” Ms Darville said.

“We want to communicate that we have some magnificent Out Islands, and they are to be enjoyed not only by international visitors but to send the message home to Bahamians that we really need to appreciate the jewels that we have out there.”

The Bahamas Out Island Promotions Board has been in existence since 1974.To date, the Board boasts 45 members.