The Tribune

By SIMON

CRUISING plays a role in our tourism mix. There is a sensible economic and social position between those who wish to near completely ban cruises and those who rejoice at gangbuster numbers that provide limited economic gains.

Countries around the world that have cruise ports continue to seek a balance, because of the effects of overtourism to their destinations caused by large numbers of cruise passengers.

Unlike stopovers visitors, US citizens do not need a passport to travel to The Bahamas on “closed-loop itineraries, ie, cruises departing from and returning to the exact same US port.”

According to the US Department of State, there are approximately 145 million US citizens without passports. The Bahamas is open to a much larger market of Americans by way of cruises, especially because of our proximity to the US.

Historically, retail stores, hair braiders, straw vendors, taxi and tour drivers, and others, have benefited from the cruise business. Still, there have also historically been concerns and contention about the effects of mass cruising.

This includes air pollution and ocean dumping of sewage, gray water, and bilge waste. Cruise line executives have taken advantage of Caribbean destinations by dividing and conquering small-island state governments when it came to a host of concessions.

How have we been complicit? What have we failed to do in our tourism and economic strategies to grow stopover visitors, while improving our tourism product, including downtown Nassau? The cruise lines have taken advantage of our neglect, bad policies, and failures in tourism.

Today, a major contention is the number of private islands or enclaves we have agreed to lease to the cruise lines.

This journal reported in 2023: “In 2020, while in opposition, it was reported that Prime Minister Philip...Davis declared that a PLP government would cancel any lease granted to RCI for Crown land to develop its beach club project. However, after the Progressive Liberal Party won the 2021 general election, officials said Mr Davis was seeking a compromise in the Crown land row.”

Why did the PLP change its mind on the project?

In opposition, now-Tourism Minister Glenys Hanna-Martin called the proposal “hare-brained” and suggested it would take food out of the mouth of Bahamian entrepreneurs.

She pressed that cruise passengers should instead support local tour and taxi drivers and small businesses inside of isolating in a private enclave.

After the PLP came to power and reversed its stance, many believed that Hanna Martin breached cabinet protocol to repeat her opposition to the project. Her view, shared by many, is that The Bahamas had gone far enough in granting permission to cruise lines for private enclaves.

Now in the chair, the daughter of Arthur and Beryl Hanna has a progressive and nationalist opportunity and obligation to protect the country from the further cannibalization by those cruise lines engaged in a new form of colonialism in tourism.

Consider a number of fairly recent comments by cruise executives. A Royal Caribbean executive noted in an interview with Travelhost:

“Perfect Day at CocoCay continues to perform exceptionally well, and we are reaching important milestones on Royal Beach Club Paradise Island opening in 2025 and the Royal Beach Club in Cozumel, Mexico opening in 2026. These new experiences uniquely position us to continue taking share from land-based alternatives.”

At the March/April 2024 Seatrade Cruise Global conference, cruise executives stated that cruise lines are not competing against each other. They are mostly competing against land-based vacations. The lines are boasting of their superior value in lodgings, entertainment, restaurants, and gambling. And they are using their private islands to press their competitive advantage.

This is all good and wonderful for cruise lines.

What are the effects, however, on tourism and stopover visitors in The Bahamas? Why do we boast of so many cruise passengers, when millions never the leave the ships or millions only disembarks on a private island?

While the Ministry of Tourism was seeking to convert cruise passengers to stopover visitors, cruise executives were boasting about their success in accomplishing just the opposite.

From the perspective of the economy of The Bahamas, they were converting high value stopovers to low value cruise passengers.

Anyone who has taken a cruise on these modern ships and visited their private islands and compared the quality and price of the experience, begins to understand why converting Bahamas stopovers to cruises has been relatively easy.

Minister Hanna Martin is on the right track with her focus on product improvement and greater Bahamian ownership of tourism. But she must realize that her task is considerably bigger and more complex.

The minister noted in her recent national budget presentation: “... We will establish curated vendor markets and pop-up commercial zones to give Bahamian makers, food vendors and artisans a permanent, organized presence downtown.”

This is well and good. But is it enough?

Hanna Martin rightly began her new post by focusing on improving the product. The Bahamas is not a destination with scores of all-inclusives, where visitors disappear behind a security wall on arrival and emerge after several days to go to the airport. Our visitors, for the most part, are free to roam and enjoy experiences across various islands.

Product improvements enhance the condition of our country generally to the benefit of visitors and residents and they distribute visitor spending more widely. To illustrate how we are viewed by others, one cruise executive was moved to describe their private island as “The Bahamas without the mess.”

Minister Hanna Martin has a complex of interconnected challenges to address: the quality of our tourism product on multiple levels; the need to boost stopover visitors to grow our economy and quality jobs; and the cannibalisation of our tourism economy by cruise lines.

She will have many allies. But she will also have powerful domestic and international pushback from private and narrower interests bent on preserving and advancing their big-sized slices of the proverbial economic pie. Hers is a responsibility and fight her late father well-understood as a nationalist and cabinet minister.