The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

NASSAU Paradise Island Promotion Board (NPIPB) has reported a significant jump in interest in holidaying in The Bahamas.

NPIPB  president Fred Lounsberry, told Tribune Business that things are getting “very busy” at the NPIPB due to increase in traveller interest in The Bahamas, but aggregate hits to the website are still only one third of 2019’s numbers.

He said: “We look at a couple of different measures, but from Google Analytics travel trends, Bahamas search for March was up 19 percent versus the prior month. Nassau search demand, this is people looking for The Bahamas and Nassau, Nassau is up 30 percent over the prior month; air travel search, month on month 57 percent and hotel was up 27 percent.”

The NPIPB’s search trends are in line with similar trends presented by the travel company, Expedia which show searches about The Bahamas had increased by 170 percent in February.

Mr Lounsberry also said these trends are “going in the right way”.

“Visits to our website are up 41 percent and conversions are up 49.6 percent,” he said.

Conversions represent people that log on to the NPIPB’s website and then go on to a member hotel’s website, something that is a key indicator on the seriousness of potential visitors.

“This is big, the base is growing so if we do this every month for a few months we’ll be feeling a lot better. But it’s definitely very positive,” said Mr Lounsberry.

 “We’re getting ready to launch and get pretty aggressive in the next couple of weeks and co-operating with some of the major OTA (online travel agencies) like Expedia and then we’re going to be doing connected television and go very direct in about seven markets, we’re still working on that plan and that will start probably towards the end of the month.

“But the fact is we’re ramping up our marketing pretty dramatically from what we’ve done prior. When you look at the trends and you see that the wind is not in our face anymore it’s turning now to our backs.

“In 2019 we were averaging 600,000 hits to the website a month and right now we are averaging 200,000 and growing every month. 2019 is our benchmark because 2020 was obviously a washout, but at least things are starting to move.

“It started at 50,000 a week and then it has been creeping up to 200,000 a month and it is rolling every week, but we have a long way to go and all of our measurements are showing now that we’re closing this gap on 2019. Our goals and objectives are to get us back to 2019. I think we are certainly going the right way.

“We’re increasing our digital spending literally every week to get us back to where we were, it is a function of budget and our revenue and as business grows we will have to invest every dime of it.”