The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas enjoyed a near-37 percent positive swing on January stopover bookings within six weeks, it was revealed yesterday, eliminating fears that tourism officials needed to "pack and go home".

Joy Jibrilu, the Ministry of Tourism's director-general, said forward booking indicators for this month had swung from showing a 29 percent decline in early December 2019 to an increase of almost eight percent against an especially strong month last year.

Speaking at the Caribbean Travel Marketplace (CTM) conference, Mrs Jibrilu said the next three months' forward bookings only reflected those made with commercial airlines and excluded charter or private flights, meaning visitor numbers are likely to be higher.

"January to March we are behind by negative 5.5 percent," she said. "However, the outlook for January is positive at 7.9 percent, while February is pretty static. March is down by 28.2 percent and we put this slide up here because if you had seen the figures the first week of December, all of us said within the Ministry of Tourism said: 'Pack our bags and go home'.

"January was trending down the first week of December when we started looking at our forward bookings. It was down at about minus 29 percent, so to see that turnaround in six weeks to where we are now, it speaks to a multiplicity of things."

Mrs Jibrilu added: "We know our top three origin cities showing positive trends are New York City, Boston and Miami, as well as Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and we also know that the negative numbers are without a doubt because we have got to include our current booking situation in Freeport and Marsh Harbour. If we were to pull those out obviously it would be a completely different picture."

Fred Lounsberry, chief executive for the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotion Board (NPPB), said there had been 7.9m visitors to its website and, from that, 1.75m referrals to other hotel websites.

"We are currently in the first week of 2020 up 33 percent, and our conversions are up 10 percent," he said. "As the director-general mentioned we are seeing the trends are very, very positive.

"What we are hearing from our airline partners and hotels is that the booking trends are catching up. A lot of compression and a lot of last-minute bookings, but the cold weather that's creating this wind certainly does not hurt up north. The general feeling in the air is that we are going to have a very good Spring Break and Spring period through March and up to Easter and beyond."

Mr Lounsberry said airlift to The Bahamas was also expanding. "Since 2018 we actually added close to 400,000 additional seats on an annual basis," he added. "For the calendar year 2019 we were up 15 percent.

"First quarter this year we will have 9.3 percent more seats. We have added 23 percent in 2019, and first quarter will be 34 percent over where we were pre-Baha Mar and 2,200 additional rooms."

Mr Lounsberry continued: "We have a lot of airlift and new airlift. Sun Country Airlines are now running on Saturday's from the twin cities of Minneapolis to Nassau. Silver Airways has updated from 34 seaters to 47 and 72-seat aircraft. American Airlines started to do Boston service on Saturdays in January. Air Canada has added a fourth flight from Montreal starting this month. Jet Blue is doing two weekend double dailies in February.

"Boston has got a lot of attention this year as Delta has restored Saturday service, and they are now running daily right on through to the Spring, so that is a lot of additional service out of Boston. American will start their daily service next month, two months earlier than they usually do as they usually time it a little later in the season. Southwest Airlines is increasing their Baltimore capacity from Baltimore/Washington airport, and it will go daily in March and also daily in the summer, so that's really gone from once a week to the weekend and daily during some peak periods.

"American Airlines is our key connector to Miami for a lot of international service and all of the feeder service that comes into Miami. They have increased their numbers by at least 14 percent for this quarter, and as the director general mentioned, United Airways will start their new Denver non-stops on March 7. That is our furthest west non-stop, and they see about half of that traffic will be coming from LA, San Francisco, Seattle and the West Coat so that is an important addition for our efforts West of the Rockies."

Mr Lounsberry also revealed: "We have a new cruise and stay programme. We typically do not promote cruise lines because we are about overnight visitors, but this is very unique and there are not many places in the world that have this kind of opportunity.

"The cruise and stay programme is through Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line. They cruise to Nassau virtually every two days from the port of West Palm Beach, and the unique thing about them is that you can cruise over and you get on at 4pm in the evening and they set sail from Nassau.

"It's an overnight cruise with all of the amenities of a cruise ship of about 1,400 passengers, so it is not a small ship but not a mega ship. And you can disembark in Nassau and stay in one of our hotels. Currently Atlantis, Baha Mar, Comfort Suites and the Melia are being packaged, and more are in the plans to add. They just started in November, so you can get off, stay two nights and then cruise back to West Palm Beach." ."