The Tribune

By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas will make “deliberate and intentional” efforts to convert more cruise passengers to higher spending and higher-yielding stopover visitors, the deputy prime minster has pledged.

Chester Cooper, also minister of tourism, investments and aviation, said an important step towards achieving this goal will be increasing the amount of available hotel rooms in the country.

He added: “We are receiving a large number of our guests by cruise. And therefore we are going to have a deliberate and intentional effort to see how we might convert more of those cruise arrivals to stopover arrivals.

“Stopover visitors spend more than cruise visitors, and therefore it is important that we put in place many of the pieces to ensure that this growth continues. It is important for us to expand the number of hotel rooms we have available if we are going to expand our stopover arrivals.”

Mr Cooper added that the Government is launching a guest-hosting initiative to increase the number of available rooms and get more Bahamians involved in the vacation rental industry.

He said: “Sustaining the level of growth that we saw in 2023 is really going to be the challenge for 2024. We are limited by our capacity, and therefore we are launching several initiatives including the ‘Host a Guest’ initiative where we are encouraging the vacation rental business.

“We’re calling for Bahamians really to open their homes and get more deeply involved in the tourism business; to benefit as a result of the arrivals, to create wealth and, at the same time, help us to expand and grow stopover visitors.

“We’ve seen the opening of the British Colonial hotel with 300 magnificent new rooms and 18,000 square feet of meeting space. We are going to continue to work along with our stakeholders in 2024 to ensure that we continue to drive the product of tourism to a level that will allow us to attract more visitors, but also give us a product that we can be extremely proud of; we can be more proud of.”

Mr Cooper added that in 2024 there will be a greater emphasis placed on industry training, including the Bahama Host programme. He said: “We’ve done exceedingly well over the last five decades. This business is critical to the lifeblood of the people of The Bahamas.

“We are going to be doing a lot of work in terms of industry training, Bahama Host expansion and really an aggressive push to get room inventory, working along with Bahamas Investment Authority to get more of the projects out of the pipeline”