The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Ministry of Tourism is allocating $20,000-$30,000 to help provide small hotel properties, particularly in the southern Bahamas, with the technical support to improve their marketing and on-line visibility.

David Johnson, the Ministry of Tourism’s director-general, said these resorts were challenged by the lack of an effective on-line distribution system.

He added that $20,000-$30,000 was being allocated to a fund to provide the necessary support. 

Mr Johnson told Tribune Business: “With the southern islands there are some distribution issues for the smaller hotels, and we have committed that we will contribute to a fund that will enable them to have a much more effective distribution system and, with that, improve their marketing because awareness is also a challenge for them.

“It’s not much more than $20,000 or $30,000 to provide them with the technical support to get them in the digital realm with their booking solutions and their website. That is what we are talking about. We have agreed that in principal. This is really for the smaller hotels within the Family Islands, and most of them are in the south-east islands.”

Charity Armbrister, tourism director for the central and southern Bahamas, acknowledged that web-driven booking engines were a challenge.

“When visitors go on-line to book a flight to the Bahamas, and then they want to connect to one of the islands, there is  no real global booking engine for them and so they don’t get to see Pineapple Air, Western Air or Southern Air for example,” said Ms Armbrister.

  “We are still struggling with a lot of the further southern islands, and that’s largely because of the challenge we have with airlift. Until we can really fix the airlift into the southern islands it’s going to be difficult for them to be where we think they ought to be. We have persons coming in from the UK, for example, and the connecting flights are just not there and they have to overnight in Nassau. That’s really not what they want to do. They are coming into the island and they want to get there as quickly and as inexpensively as they can.”

  Mr Johnson told Tribune Business: “The airlift solution will take some time, but with these rebate programmes we are offering we are looking to make an adjustment because their airfares are even higher than that of the other islands. We are reviewing how we can make an adjustment to the amount of the rebate in order to make them more competitive.”