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Bahamas enjoys ten to 13% stopover bookings ‘shift’

By NEIL HARTNELL

and YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporters

The Bahamas is enjoying a last-minute “ten to 13 percent shift” in stopover bookings as tourists leave it late to decide whether to visit this nation, a Cabinet minister revealed yesterday.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, told Tribune Business that while forward bookings for the 2020 peak winter tourism season “look a little dire” two to three months out, they are “drastically improved” - and even turning into year-over-year increases - by the time the period of travel arrives.

He revealed that stopover bookings for January are projected to be up by seven percent, while February is currently “flat”. While March forward bookings were currently down by between 15-16 percent, Mr D’Aguilar said he was “not worried” as the Ministry of Tourism was now “mobilising and redirecting” its marketing resources to address the identified weakness.

With April “looking promising”, Mr D’Aguilar said he expected all three months between February and April 2020 - traditionally the busiest time of year for hotels and other tourism operators - to improve further as travellers continued to make their bookings late.

“Certainly on our forward booking numbers we’re noticing that if you’re two to three months out, the situation looks challenged,” the minister told this newspaper. “The numbers are down, but as you get closer to the particular month in question the negative numbers are turning slightly positive, which is encouraging.

“It’s between a ten percent to 13 percent shift. You might start down seven percent and be up three percent by the time you get to the month in question. What that tells us is, first and foremost, two to three months ago people were not considering The Bahamas but, as the message gets out that much of the country was not impacted by the storm and we’re very much open for business, they’re turning their attention back to The Bahamas and booking closet to their travel date.

“Two to three months out it looks a little dire. People are waiting to get additional information on The Bahamas, taking longer to do a bit of research and just booking later. We are right now showing we are up in January by about seven percent for our major markets, major destinations,” Mr D’Aguilar continued.

“We’re flat in February right now, which will obviously change as we get closer to the month, and March is down 15-16 percent; double digits, but I’m not worried because we will bring our major resources to bear. We know where the projected weakness is, and will mobilise and redirect our marketing resources to tackle these issues.”

Mr D’Aguilar added that it was “kind of hard to decipher from advanced bookings which destinations in The Bahamas are going to be most significantly impacted, and which will benefit from those destinations [Abaco and Grand Bahama] being out of business”.

He explained that the Ministry of Tourism’s forward booking data only measures air arrivals to The Bahamas from its major US gateways and source markets, and does not track where visitors are ultimately going in The Bahamas.

“We don’t know how down Abaco and Grand Bahama are going to be, and we don’t know where in The Bahamas our numbers are going to be up,” Mr D’Aguilar said.

He added that stopover arrivals for the three months September to November 2019, which included the period when Hurricane Dorian struck and the immediate aftermath, were down by “low double digits”. While September was down by 14.7 percent year-over-year, October and November were off by 11.7 percent and 13 percent respectively.

However, Mr D’Aguilar said that when cruise visitors were combined with stopover numbers, total tourist arrivals were ahead of 2018 comparatives by 6.5 percent and 6.7 percent for October and November, respectively, following a September drop-off of 12 percent.

“The cruise industry and its passengers have been keeping our numbers very robust,” he said. “We’re going to end up with a good year in 2019 despite the hurricane. We’re going to do better than I first thought.”

Mr D’Aguilar warned, however, that The Bahamas always has to “take into consideration that we lost Abaco”, with the island being “our second busiest market”.

He added: “Grand Bahama is beginning to come back; not to the extent that it was last year, but still it’s beginning to come back faster than Abaco. Abaco has a long way to go, primarily because they have infrastructural concerns that need to be addressed and it really isn’t open for tourism in a meaningful sense yet, just one or two pockets, but in a meaningful sense it’s not.

“But that was a significant destination in The Bahamas, so we are going to have to make up those numbers in other islands. Someone WhatsApp’d me a picture of Exuma airport where they had three American Airlines jets on the ground at the same time, which was never seen before. So I think persons who love The Bahamas, who would have gone to Abaco in the past, are now looking at some of the other islands while Abaco rebuilds.”

Mr D’Aguilar said the fate of the Grand Bahama International Airport was “still very fluid”, and said: “The Government of the Bahamas is considering its options as it relates to that airport. We’re not happy with the condition of the airport, we’re not happy with the pace of the repairs of that airport.

“So we are exploring our options. I don’t think we have concretised anything yet. We’re still looking at if there was going to be a deal, what would that deal look like. It’s moving, and the Government is not happy with the current situation and is looking to rectify that.”

As for the Grand Lucayan hotel’s potential sale, Mr D’Aguilar said: “The deal is inching ever closer We’re at the finishing line, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s, really hoping to get it concluded in the quickest possible time. We don’t have a deal yet, but we’re close.”

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