The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas broke the six million mark for total visitors arrivals in 2013, the Minister of Tourism M confirmed yesterday, while telling this newspaper: “We still have more work to do”.

Speaking with Tribune Business, Obie Wilchcombe said this nation received 6.2 million visitors in 2013, a roughly 5 per cent increase from the reported 5.9 million the previous year.

He added that while the industry appeared to be headed in the right direction, there was “still a lot of work to be done”.

This was backed by data produced by the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) 2014 State of the Industry report. which revealed that the Bahamas was one of eight nations in this region to suffer a year-over-year decline in stopover arrivals in 2013.

For the 10 months to end-October, higher-yielding stopover arrivals were off 5.3 per cent year-over-year, indicating that all the Bahamas’ growth came from cruise visitors who have a much lower per capita spend. Only Barbados, with a 5.5 per cent drop, suffered a greater decline than the Bahamas.

All this was confirmed by the CTO report, which found that for the 11 months to end-November, the Bahamas saw a 6.1 per cent increase in cruise passenger arrivals to 4.175 million.

“This year has started off pretty good, particularly in Grand Bahama,” Mr Wilchcombe said. “We were trying to get that economy moving again, and the year has started off extremely well.

“We are very pleased with Sunwing and what they have been able to do. We are making the first steps to true recovery. We are not fully recovered. We ended last year pretty good based on the projected numbers of 6.2 million visitors.”

Mr Wilchcombe said his ministry was still actively pursuing markets such as sports tourism, conventions and weddings to attract more business.

Commenting on the latter niche, Mr Wilchcombe noted that the Ministry of Tourism was set to launch its ‘16 island weddings’ promotion in New York this Friday.

“There is a big event in New York on Friday. We’re launching the 16 island weddings, but it’s for the US market,” he added.

“What you’re going to see is major competitions. When we left office we left the Bahamas in position number five for weddings. We dropped considerably. That is a market which generates in excess of $14 billion and it continues to grow.

“We have so many spots. We want to show all of the 16 islands of the Bahamas by having competitions where couples intending to get married could apply. The winner would be awarded the opportunity to get married in one of the islands. It will be an incredible event.”

Mr Wilchcombe added: “We have much more to do. We have to work on our product. There are still too many visitors with nothing to do, too many taxi drivers sitting around because there is nothing to take people to.

“My ministry is now engaged in serious dialogue to get more activity going, more cultural events going as a part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of tourism.We want to have consistent increases in visitor arrivals.

“We have new inventory coming on stream. Our job is to get more gates open. We want to extend beyond the eastern seaboard of the United States. We’re seeing increased numbers from Detroit, we’re seeing interest from the Texas area, so we have a lot of work to do in the US itself. The Canadian market is paying good dividends. Hopefully some new airlift will come from South America by June or July this year, and we’re focused on Russia as well.”