The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday voiced optimism that major resorts will “get back to 60 percent of where they were in 2019” by Christmas, with May’s visitor arrivals forecast to rise to the mid-70,000 range.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, pictured, minister of tourism and aviation, told the Rotary Club of south-east Nassau that while Atlantis and Baha Mar were both reporting a faster booking pace than pre-COVID this did not translate into similar occupancy levels.

However, he added that “the trajectory is starting to go back up” in terms of visitor arrivals as measured by foreign purchases of The Bahamas’ health travel visa. These had increased from 14,000 in November 2020 to 32,000 in December and, following a dip in January and February over fears of a quarantine for returning US travellers, had subsequently risen to 60,000 in March and 64,000 in April.

With health travel visa issuances for May projected to be in the mid-70,000s range, Mr D’Aguilar acknowledged that The Bahamas’ tourism rebound - and recovery of its wider economy - still has a long distance to travel.

“The bread and butter is Nassau. Seventy-five percent of our arrivals come to Nassau,” he said. “The big hotels are the revenue generators. They started off in the 10-15 percent occupancy range, and are now at 30 percent, but clearly have not rebounded.

“We’re hopeful of a significant rebound, certainly by Christmas if nothing else impacts that, and we’re back to 60 percent of where we were in 2019. It’s a bit of a crystal ball now as people are making last-minute decisions and there are impediments to travel.”

Conceding that cruise passengers accounted for 75 percent of total visitor arrivals to The Bahamas pre-COVID, but just 11 percent of total tourism spending, Mr D’Aguilar said the 5.4m attracted in 2019 “give us the bragging rights on the number of people coming to the country” yet the focus remained on higher-yielding stopover counterparts.

He also acknowledged that “the big challenge always there is connecting the tourism economy with the domestic economy, and there’s always been frustration that 70-80 cents of every $1 spent in the country goes out to purchase what these visitors ultimately consume”.

Disclosing that he had pushed the Ministry of Tourism to implement a data and numbers-driven approach to promoting The Bahamas, Mr D’Aguilar said he had reduced marketing spend on Europe after taking office in 2017.

“I felt we spent too much time on Europe trying to attract visitors from there; yes, they stay longer and spend a bit more, but only 7 percent of our visitors come from Europe and of those 5 percent come from the UK,” he added.

The minister said The Bahamas’ marketing efforts moving forward will be boosted by “the wealth of information” gained from the health travel visas, which will enable this nation to focus its promotional dollars on “the right zip codes and addresses” where the bulk of its visitors originate from.

Reiterating that the Ministry of Tourism and its health travel visa overseers had been “taken aback” by the surge in Bahamas travel demand once this nation removed the COVID-19 PCR test requirements for fully vaccinated travellers on May 1, Mr D’Aguilar said this was “a nice problem to have” and reassured that the necessary adjustments had been put in place to reduce three-four phone waiting times.

Turning to the new overflight fees regime, he added Cuba was “not being so accommodating” as the US when it came to sharing revenues from fees paid by aircraft transiting the portion of Bahamian air space that it manages.

Cuba controls 25 percent of Bahamian air space, with the US overseeing the remainder, and The Bahamas has yet to come to a deal with the former on revenue sharing. The US, though, has allowed The Bahamas to keep 100 percent of the revenue and is only charging $80,000 annually for the provision of data on all aircraft overflying this nation.

Mr D’Aguilar said future ministers and governments will have the scope to increase the fees, but his focus had been to get the regime in place. He described it as “the greatest deal in the world” given that The Bahamas was receiving all the income from the US air space portion but none of the associated expenses.