The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I am writing in support of the many people writing letters to The Tribune about the difficult entry requirements for The Bahamas. I am not only a timeshare owner in Nassau but have operated a travel agency here in Hartford for many years.

For travel agents customer confidence and satisfaction is the most important part of our business. When we book clients on trips they want to have certainty of travel and as few problems as possible in booking.

That is the way it was for booking trips to The Bahamas until your Government introduced entry rules which have immediately created such uncertainties that, as of today, we have no bookings for The Bahamas.

For most of the years we have operated it has been one of our best selling destinations.

However when we have had to explain all the requirements to complete this year no one is interested in booking even the most ardent repeat visitors.

Simply put they do not want to book and place money down on airfares and accommodation, mostly with package deals, if they cannot travel. There is too much risk.

Your new rule of five day entry from the COVID-19 PCR test combined with the nuisance of the Health Visa are causing the problems.

So we are being forced to send clients to the other Caribbean and Mexican resorts which are far easier to enter.

A recent travel online conference discussing your region amongst travel agencies in the US northeast reviewed all the problems.

Some of our State health facilities are offering COVID-19 PCR tests but many are not offering them to healthy people wanting leisure travel. This has forced many people to go to expensive private clinics often far away from their homes.

Very few people are willing to take the time for such hassles. They usually have to wait a couple of days for the written test results and send them to Nassau not knowing when authorisation to travel will be given.

Naturally they are not going to book under these conditions which are made more difficult because the number of flights have been so reduced to Nassau. Now they must pay for your Health Insurance to obtain the Visa whereas we always sell travel insurance here at our office if clients do not have their own private insurance.

How anyone in your Ministry of Tourism could ever have designed such unworkable policies is beyond my imagination. I feel badly for all the tourism sector.

The Bahamians rely on a robust travel business for their jobs.

Blaming lack of visitors on the health pandemic seems like a convenient excuse for their failure to properly understand how prospective visitors would react to such foolish policies.

We have had no satisfactory explanation what is wrong with people bringing test results with them and/or testing people on arrival rather than the current methods.

Based on what I see today I dread the future for The Bahamas if tourism completely collapses.

JONATHAN G POWELL

Hartford Connecticut,

USA

December 12, 2020.