The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board's (NPIPB) chief executive yesterday said the destination requires a "concerted marketing effort" to outpace the competition now that post-COVID “revenge tourism is over".

Joy Jibrilu told Tribune Business that the Promotion Board's July numbers, which showed an 81.7 percent increase in visitors to its website year-over-year and a 72.8 percent increase in new visitors, reflect its efforts to market Nassau and Paradise Island to potential travellers. Some six million persons have visited nassauparadiseisland.com for the year-to-date, with 4.9m new visitors.

“This is really because of the focused marketing we have been putting on the [US] West Coast to attract and build demand for all of the airlift that’s coming out. So we've put in a concerted marketing effort and it's reflected in those numbers," she said.

Airline seat capacity into the destination increased by 17 percent year-over-year for July 2023 with an average of 40 non-stop flights per day arriving at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA). There was also a 64.7 percent increase in link-outs or connections from the Promotion Board's website to a member resort's platform, with 1.2m such connections for the first seven months of 2023, and a 103 percent jump in returning visitors to 677,800.

Chester Cooper, the deputy prime minister, earlier this week said The Bahamas is headed for its “best year” for tourism with arrivals trending some 30 percent higher pre-COVID levels. Mrs Jibrilu did not disagree, adding: “Everything has been leading to this and it just doesn’t happen overnight. So after 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, we were on trend to already perform better than 2019.

“When you do everything and the marketing is in the right place, when it’s data driven and we’re not guessing, it makes it a lot better and certainly when you come into 2023 and we have the pent-up demand, where we’ve been performing very well and we have a great product, we couldn’t do any better.”

While the closures of the British Colonial and Melia Nassau Beach (now being demolished) have reduced room inventory, Mrs Jibrilu added: “We have to be mindful that the deputy prime minister is also including cruise tourism where those numbers were automatically expected to grow. That was forecast with the opening of the Nassau Cruise Port.

"When we see that level of traffic to the website, we know that that will convert, ultimately, into the growth and, in fact, that’s what attracted the airlines to consider The Bahamas when they started seeing that level of interest in traffic to the website,” Mrs Jibrilu said. New routes are being added by the likes of Jet Blue, United Airways and Silver Airways.