According to Vernice Walkine, deputy director general in the Ministry of Tourism, the number of college students coming to The Bahamas as a part of special tours has drastically decreased.
While an average of 1,000 spring breakers are coming to The Bahamas per week, Mrs. Walkine told a local newspaper on Thursday that room rates are too expensive when compared to other spring break destinations, like Cancun, Mexico.
“One of the problems we have is that we actually don’t have a lot of hotel rooms available at the kind of prices that students generally find attractive, Mrs. Walkine said.
However, Mrs. Walkine pointed out that a new trend is developing.
“What that means is that while the numbers are fewer [in terms of those] coming by the way of an organized spring break operator, we have in fact received continuous growth in the number of students coming generally because a lot of them we are finding are coming now by way of independent trips of small groups of friends or their families, she explained.
“What that generally means is that those students who are coming with their families and friends that are not part of an organized spring beak programme, generally have higher disposable income and could afford the higher priced properties in The Bahamas like The Atlantis and The Radisson and so on
Despite lower numbers of spring breakers, many local hotel properties, including small inns, are reporting high occupancy levels during this spring break season.
However, a number of the hoteliers maintained that spring break guests account for only a fraction of their registered hotel guests.
Stephen Kappeler, regional director of the Holiday Inns, said that only one third of the guests are spring breakers despite the hotels being full to capacity for the next 14 days.
“We have actually at both of our properties taken a little less of the spring break business just because it is not as profitable as some of the other regular transient guests, Mr. Kappeler said.
Barbara Smith, an office manager at a smaller scale property, The Red Carpet Inn, said that the property occupancy level is soaring.
“Spring break has helped occupancy because there is an influx of guests who are moving out of the popular resorts for peace and quiet, Ms. Smith said.
Yet another property manager, Michael Hooper of The British Colonial Hilton, said that the hotel has been running at a 94 percent occupancy level. But he said only about 20 to 25 of the property’s rooms are occupied by spring breaks.
A few hoteliers on the Cable Beach Strip are also reporting heightened occupancy levels.
Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe told the Journal on Thursday that The Bahamas is considering an expansion of its inventory.
“Right now we have a total of about 9,000 hotel rooms here in the capital. The demand for hotel rooms is increasing because we have airlift that is proportionately much higher than the room numbers we have, he said.
“We have almost 55 [fewer] hotel rooms than we have airlift. This is an issue that we are addressing. We require that if we are going to be an effective destination we need more from the tourism industry.
Mrs. Walkine said considering the fact that The Bahamas does not advertise or promote the spring break market, the country continues to receive healthy numbers of spring breakers, although smaller.
“So it is hard to say how many students we have come down as a result of spring break because it is impossible to measure those spring breakers who are not coming as a result of an organized programme, she explained.
“We still have two large spring break tour operators who are bringing in every week somewhere around 500 to 600 students each. So that is an average of 1,000 students over the course of eight weeks.
By: Royanne Forbes, The Bahama Journal
