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‘Banner-breaking’ 38% visitor rise in Eleuthera

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DR KENNETH ROMER

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Eleuthera has followed a “banner-breaking” December for stopover visitors with a 38 percent year-over-year increase in such arrivals for 2023’s first two months, it was revealed yesterday.

Dr Kenneth Romer, the Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation’s deputy director-general, and also acting aviation director, told the Eleuthera Business Outlook conference that the island is poised to displace Nassau as “the market leader” when it comes to growth in air arrivals.

Hailing Eleuthera as having “the most potential” out of all Bahamian islands, he disclosed that the island’s stopover visitors for the two months to end-February 2023 had risen by 38.3 percent or more than 4,200 compared to the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, growing to 16,652 from 11,318.

The early 2023 performance followed December 2022’s 51.1 percent jump over pre-COVID numbers, with 9,561 stopover visitors compared to just 6,327 during the same month in 2019. The latter could have been impacted by Hurricane Dorian fall-out, given perceptions among some travellers that all The Bahamas had been impacted by the Category Five storm.

With The Bahamas’ total 2022 visitor arrivals just 3 percent behind the record 7.3m set in 2019, Dr Romer told the Outlook conference: “The Bahamas is recovering faster than the world generally.... The Bahamas is expected to outpace industry-wide recovery with airlift performance at a minimum of 95 percent-plus below pre-pandemic. We are right now in a good place when it comes to overall airlift recovery.”

Noting that the spending and economic impact produced by air arrivals is typically 28 times’ greater than their cruise passenger counterparts, who represent this nation’s volume business, the senior tourism official added: “We have to strike a balance between volume and value. We do know stopover visitors, we refer to them as ‘heads in beds’.”

Eleuthera attracted some 66,000 higher-yielding stopover visitors in 2019, the last full year prior to the COVID pandemic, and D Romer said the destination had withstood the fall-out better than most. “That number held very strong, even in 2021, when the rest of the country was struggling. Eleuthera was holding its ground,” he added. “In 2022, Eleuthera saw some 81,000 air stopover international arrivals, a 21 percent increase over 2020 and 2019.

“Eleuthera is among the global leaders when it comes to recovery as a destination. If you look at December 2022and look at the bottom line, almost all of the island were outperforming 2022. But if you look at Eleuthera, there were 9,561 visitors in December 2022 compared to 6,327 in 2019. This was a banner-breaking month for tourism.”

Dr Romer said Eleuthera has also increased its market share, in terms of the total visitors to The Bahamas that it attracts, from 2-3 percent to 5 percent. “I really believe Eleuthera could see some 6-8 percent of the entire visitors to The Bahamas,” he added. “Eleuthera has the potential to cause it to happen.

“We need to look at seat capacity. We were just some 5 percent below total seat capacity [for the entire Bahamas in 2023 compared to pre-COVID]. When we look at North Eleuthera, it is some 10 percent over. We’ve got 10 percent more seats than we got in 2019. Governor’s Harbour has 46 percent less seats compared to 2019, and we know Rock Sound is not attracting legacy commercial carriers. We’re looking to change that.”

The acting aviation director said that while Eleuthera and its tourism industry are “crying” out for extra airlift, the island must focus on upgrading its product offering and room inventory to entice the airlines to add frequency and routes. “I’ll tell you about what the airlines are saying,” Dr Romer added. “They’re asking about your available inventory, they’re asking what heads in beds are going in.

“You’re crying for extra airlift. They’re looking at product deficiencies.... Is your product at a standard to attract new development? They want to know about the state of your infrastructure, and not just your airport infrastructure. They want to know about your Airbnbs and how they are being managed, otherwise they are going to bring people to a bad show and those visitors will not be converted to repeat visitors.”

Dr Romer said Ministry of Tourism officials were having discussions with American Airlines about providing airlift into Governor’s Harbour in response to industry requests. However, he reiterated that Eleuthera’s product diversification and quality must be of sufficient standard to attract the airlines.

“You cannot bring persons to a bad show,” he said. “When we look at infrastructure development and airports, we must take ownership of the tourism outcomes.” With 70 percent of jobs and economic activity generated by tourism, Dr Romer added: “Airlines respond to demand... We cannot get demand with a shoddy product.”

Despite these challenges, Dr Romer told Eleuthera attendees: “You are in a good place right now to be the fastest growing island, and the island with the most potential among all of the other islands of The Bahamas. When we look at 2023, we saw a strong start to the year.

“We would have seen January and February were above 2019. We had some 1.2m visitors in the first two months of 2019, and we have now seen almost 1.7m for the first two months of 2023. That is record-breaking. We’re on a schedule not just to meet 2022’s figure; we’re going to beat it and the deputy prime minister has given us a mandate to beat it by at least 20 percent. Do we have the capacity? If we grow arrivals by 20 percent, what is going to happen to the product?”

Dr Romer told the Outlook conference that Bahamas-wide air arrivals for the first two months of 2023 “are less than half a percent off the first two months in 2019”. However, for the same period, Eleuthera’s air arrival figures are some 38 percent up on pre-COVID numbers. “Eleuthera is going to be the market leader instead of Nassau when it comes to the volume of air arrivals,” he added.

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