The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A senior Atlantis executive yesterday said he is “encouraged” by Easter bookings despite tourism not yet recovering to 2019 levels.

Russell Miller, the Paradise Island mega resort’s executive vice-president of hotel operations, told Tribune Business yesterday that holiday weekend bookings are “looking good” despite not being comparable to pre-COVID-19 figures.

“Based on what’s going on in the situation we faced with COVID-19, we’re encouraged by the bookings,” he added. Mr Miller confirmed that the resort has now opened three of its towers - The Royal Towers, the Cove at Atlantis and the Reef - and sad: “We’re pleasantly surprised with the numbers and we’re looking forward to having a great holiday weekend.

“We’ve had a Spring Break period, but we’ve controlled it and limited it. Again, it is not the volumes we had in past years, but it is very manageable with the numbers we do have. It’s been good.”

Looking forward to Easter with renewed optimism, Atlantis has planned several activities for guests including a choir on Sunday for a small concert and an Easter bunny for an Easter egg hunt. “We have some nice celebrations and programmes for the weekend,” Mr Miller said.

The Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD), in a statement, said March had been the strongest month for passenger traffic passing through Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) since the COVID-19 pandemic began just over one year ago.

The airport operator said Easter’s timing meant April will start strongly, but urged travellers to arrive at LPIA at least three hours before departure to allow time to go through all COVID-19 protocols. Persons heading to the US, and who want to take their rapid antigen test at the airport, were told to arrive three-and-half hours before departure.

“NAD has seen steady but incremental monthly increases in domestic traffic since November 2020,” it said. “There have also been month-over-month increases in international travellers for November, December and January.

“The airport experienced a slight downturn in international passengers during February compared to January. However, March has shown the type of positive upward trend that we hope can continue throughout 2021.

“During March, NAD had non-stop flights from 21 markets. Nine of those 21 markets had daily or near-daily service for the month. It is anticipated that April will have non-stop flights from 23 markets with American Airlines adding flights from WashingtonDC; JetBlue adding flights from New Jersey; and United Airlines reintroducing its Denver flight.”

Baha Mar, in a short statement to Tribune Business, said: “We have seen a promising increase in bookings over the last few weeks, exceeding our pace of reservations compared to the same time in 2019.

“Spring Break and Easter are the current highlights, but we are observing increasing reservations for summer, fall and winter as well. We are hopeful that slowly declining cases of COVID-19 in our key markets, and the roll-out of the vaccine, will encourage people to take a much-needed vacation.”

Andoni Lisgaris, owner/operator of Reel Dreams Sport fishing Charters, said he has been having a solid Easter period leading up to the holiday weekend, but said business may be impacted by forecast windy weather over the upcoming weekend.

Mr Lasgaris said: “Things picked up and they came suddenly. This time of year, traditionally, is pretty busy for us because of Spring Break and Easter. I think what happened was a lot of people weren’t booking too many things in advance because they wanted to see if they would test negative in order to enter The Bahamas.

“We’ve had days when we were completely booked, but I do think it’s slightly different for the group excursions because they are supposed to be limited. For us, everything is private so we only carry up to six groups at a time and these are people that have travelled together so they are exempt from the limitations. A lot of Americans were ready to travel.”

Mr Lasgaris said there has been a “good mix” of customers coming from Atlantis and Baha Mar, but he has seen “definitely more” customers from Airbnb’s. He added: “This is just for us, because when they book we ask them to indicate where they are staying, and on our booking forms you can see that it is definitely more Airbnb’s than we would normally attract.”

Nicholas Pinder, general manager of Born Free Fishing Charters, said business has been “tremendous” over the past two weeks. However, he also said he may not go out on tours this weekend because of the possibility of bad weather.

He added: “The tours that are sought after, like the swimming pigs tours and the Out Island tours, have been pretty popular. The fishing tours are struggling, but the main Exuma runs and the Eleuthera runs have been okay.

“We have been getting most of our customers online. It is hard to get clients out of the hotels because the hotels are tied up with their preferred vendors in the hotels. So it’s harder to get reservations other than they pre-book, but I would say the reservations are about 50/50 between Atlantis and Baha Mar.”

Iola Knowles, director of Sandytoes Excursion, said weather permitting they have a trip scheduled for Saturday. For the three days per week that she opts to operate, Ms Knowles said that things are “decent” for this time of year but it is “nowhere near 2019 numbers.”

Ms Knowles said: “Compared to 2019 it’s obviously way down. We are 75 percent down, but despite that we are glad that we are able to put on three scheduled tours a week. Two years ago we were operating every day per week at 100 percent capacity.”

Ms Knowles also complained about the lack of business from Baha Mar and Atlantis, saying the large resorts have opted to drive their own tours in-house. She added: “We have to drive all of our business.

“We’re literally doing as much online marketing, search engine optimisation, social media, but we are driving 95 percent of our own traffic right now. We do get a few bookings through the Warwick with Majestic Tours. They have a presence there and they sell us as much as they can.”