The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE Tribune Business Reporter nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net TOURISM executives expressed optimism yesterday that within the next two months Vision Airlines' performance in Grand Bahama will improve, the tourism director-general telling Tribune Business that "there can be no tourism sector in Grand Bahama without a robust airlift program". Vision Airlines began flights to Grand Bahama on November 11, providing direct non-stop service from five US cities and, with its competitive low fares, was expected to bring an additional 100,000 seats annually to Grand Bahama in its first phase of operations. In an earlier interview with Tribune Business, though, David Johnson said Vision Airlines had not been performing up to expectations. He said the airline's service to Grand Bahama was operating at about 30 per cent load factors - far below the 65 per cent expectation. Mr Johnson told Tribune Business yesterday that great progress had been made during meetings with Grand Bahama tourism stakeholders over Vision Air's performance, although nothing had been signed off as yet. "We made great progress. We are buttoning down some of these ends, and we should within 30 days see a restructuring of that airlift program being flown by Vision in a way that we are optimistic will strengthen flights considerably," he said. "We hope to elevate the flights to more robust scheduled flights that will attract more sellers, bring much greater visibility, and give us much more flexibility in being able to make a variety of offers we cannot execute now with Vision, which has been harming the demands for the flights. We are optimistic that by March we should see those flights performing much better than they have." Speaking on the need for non-stop, low cost airlift to Grand Bahama, Mr Johnson said: "There can be no tourism sector in Grand Bahama without a robust airlift program. This is a step toward rebuilding the airlift that Grand Bahama once had. Much improved results is what I anticipate going forward. "There has been some restructuring on the hotel end. Grand Lucayan needed to up their game, and they demonstrated that by the appointment they just made." Mr Johnson was referring to the recent appointment of Thomas Anderson to the post of Grand Lucayan's chief marketing officer. Mr Anderson reportedly brings more than 30 years of travel/tourism experience to the resort. Calls to Grand Lucayan executives were not returned up to press time, but another Grand Bahama hotel manager told Tribune Business that greater emphasis needs to be placed on marketing Grand Bahama as a destination as a whole. Magnus Alnebeck, general manager of the Pelican Bay resort, told Tribune Business: "It is extremely important that we have good airlift coming in to the destination. "Now, of course, the problem is that airlift in itself doesn't solve the problem. Vision is a good start, but we also need to be better at marketing the whole destination, and we also need to be better at creating a fun and exciting product. Just because we have airlift doesn't mean people will come, and when they do come we have to make sure our product is up to par."