The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) has become just the second in the Caribbean to have its COVID-19 health measures certified as matching best practices by a global airport body.

Vernice Walkine, Nassau Airport Development Company's (NAD) chief executive, and who is a former tourism director-general, said of LPIA's accreditation by the Airports Council International: "This is important now because people look for airports to be in a particular category.

"In the event that it is suggested to them you are going to provide them with a safe environment, they know that the environment is sanitised and has all of the protocols in place to keep them safe in that environment.”

Speaking on the Financial Voice TV show organised by TCL Group, she added: “Before the pandemic, airports were largely focused on how could they process people as quickly as possible to get them through all of the check-ins, bag drops, security screening, and get them to the hold rooms and shopping, with food and beverage, so that they can spend money and get on the aircraft.

"So the focus was on making processes stricter so persons didn’t queue for very long, and they can go through their security process. You are talking about the use of the scanning equipment so that people don’t have to be in any place for very long.

"This pandemic, however, has created an evolution if you will for airports in the sense that airports now have to worry about health and safety, and not just safety as in air safety but in terms of people being safe within an environment given all of the focus on how COVID-19 is transmitted," Ms Walkine continued.

"So aircraft and airports are particularly vulnerable, and have to be seen as safe environments because of how this pandemic started and evolved, and all of the focus on it spreading on aircraft and so on.

"Whether that’s true or not, that perception is reality and so on. Airports right now find themselves having to be mindful of processes and systems that all come together to give that passenger moving through it a sense that the environment is safe and their health will be protected while they are in that environment.”

Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, a former tourism minister and director-general of tourism, said COVID-19 was accelerating the pace of digital reforms. "People just really try to find ways to have some kind of contactless transactions and so, suddenly, things people were finding very difficult to do they are now doing automatically," he added.

"Even in our own community you see more and more people communicating on Zoom and whatever it else is, and people are talking to family members all over the world in ways they never did before.”

He added: “All kinds of new things are being introduced in that particular side of our life, and I know the Ministry of Tourism is beginning to look at some very significant changes that are going to enable them to communicate with their customers in ways they never, ever did before and be able to personalise itineraries for people coming in to the country to enable transactions to happen more readily with some of the smaller vendors around The Bahamas.

"There are so many people coming into the country that have credit cards as opposed to cash, and we all know people with credit cards are a lot more liberal in their spending than they ever were before.

"So the whole world is being more digitised and, when you look at things like Airbnb, when you look at it, it really is a digital transformation that enables a lot more individual Bahamians to get directly involved in a business that they never did before."