The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas must set "clear and concise rules" for its tourism opening, and stick to them, if it is "to restore confidence in the market", a top Ministry of Tourism official has warned.

Joy Jibrilu, the Ministry's director general, said this nation must "show we're committed to the path we're on" following yesterday's tourism re-opening to enable it to restart building visitor volumes - which - apart from July - have almost completely dried up since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March.

"We need to continue to restore confidence in the market, show we're committed to the path we're on," she told a press conference called to address the sector's relaunch. Noting the demands of tour operators and The Bahamas' other travel partners, Mrs Jibrilu added: "They want clear, concise rules and regulations that are not confusing, and once they see that the numbers will pick up in the direction we want to see them."

Whether the latest travel and tourism COVID-19 protocols provide the clarity and certainty the industry, and its customers, need remains to be seen. The framework unveiled on Saturday contained a number of last-minute changes and clarifications for the health procedures visitors must comply with, some of which raised more questions than answers.

Besides the decision to drop COVID-19 on-arrival rapid antigen testing less than 72 hours before the November 1 tourism "re-opening", the latest Emergency Orders issued by the Office of the Prime Minister on Friday afternoon still stipulated that the mandatory 14-day quarantine period remained in place.

This forced Dionisio D'Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, to begin Saturday's national address with an immediate pledge that the 14-day quarantine - which most tourism industry participants have long argued was a major deterrent to visitors coming here - is indeed being eliminated consistent with previous promises, and that the oversight in the Orders will be corrected.

None of this, though, is likely to do much for the tourism market certainty that Mrs Jibrilu described as absolutely critical to restoring The Bahamas' major source of jobs, economic activity and foreign currency earnings.

And the situation further reinforces the comments made last week by Adam Stewart, Sandals group chief executive, who said the resort chain had left its Bahamas re-opening to last - out of all the Caribbean territories in which it operates - because then lack of clarity and certainty in the Government's COVID-19 approach was causing too much "confusion" in the visitor market.

Mrs Jibrilu, while warning that The Bahamas' tourism rebound was likely to be slow with numbers not "anywhere near where they would have been at the beginning of the year", said the Ministry of Tourism's travel health unit had 1,000 applications for travellers wanting to access the country during this first week of November.

She voiced optimism that, once past tomorrow's US presidential election, The Bahamas will resume its tourism marketing and demand will start to build similar to the likes of other Caribbean and central American nations that have already relaxed COVID-19 restrictions, such as Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

Also expressing confidence that commercial airlift to The Bahamas will build back as tourist demand grows, Mrs Jibrilu said she and the Ministry of Tourism had "been surprised" at the level of interest shown by existing second homeowners in how they could take advantage of the new one-year work/study visa even before it launched.

While the likes of Barbados entered this market earlier, she added: "Our advantage is proximity and the ease of getting here, so we anticipate it will be a good value added to what we already promote and market."

Mr D'Aguilar, meanwhile, said The Bahamas' was reopening its tourism industry out of "necessity" to avoid an economic and social implosion. Should The Bahamas match the average global decline identified by the United Nations' (UN) World Tourism Organisation, he warned it would see a five million drop-off from last year's 7.2m visitors.

"The latest data from the World Tourism Organization shows that international tourism is down a whopping 70 percent," Mr D'Aguilar said. "Put another way, if we used to get 7.2m tourists a year, as we did just last year in 2019, the best we can expect right now is 2.2m tourists a year – a reduction of a staggering five million tourists, assuming we all do our part to prevent, diminish and stop further community spread of this deadly virus by wearing our masks, social distancing and not congregating in groups, both large and small."

Mr D'Aguilar said no decision had been taken to alter Bahamasair's "grounding" on international routes as the current minimal demand meant there was simply insufficient business to justify resuming flights to Florida.

While it was costing the Government "an absolute fortune" to restrict the national flag carrier to domestic routes only, he added that restarting international routes would only threaten to "exacerbate the losses".

The minister, though, said he and the Ministry of Tourism were "really excited" that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was working with the cruise industry to enable it to resume sailing through its Framework for resuming safe and responsible cruise ship passenger operations.

Mr D'Aguilar described this as a "small step, but a big step" in terms of that sector resuming its Bahamas' cruises, as it indicated the CDC had shifted its position - prompted likely by a nudge from the Trump White House - away from simply issuing 'no sail' orders due to COVID-19.