As far as correcting imbalances go, properties along Cable Beach and southwest New Providence should be redeveloped within the shortest time frame, according to the Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe.
For years, The Bahamas has grappled with the problems of inadequate hotel rooms and airlift. The latter was corrected over the last several months with the new services offered by low cost air carriers and certain legacy airlines expanding their services.
But there are just approximately 9,000 hotel rooms in New Providence and about 15,000 in the entire country.
Minister Wilchcombe placed a high priority on current redevelopment plans as a means of enhancing the full vacation experience that The Bahamas has to offer. In January it was reported that five million visitors came here last year.
“You can’t simply have an Atlantis and nothing else. Atlantis a world renowned destination, but you want to ensure that we are offering even more than that,” said Minister Wilchcombe in a Bahama Journal interview. “There is a lot for us to do. Unfortunately, this should have been started a long time ago.”
There is about 55 percent more airlift than hotel rooms in Nassau. It has also contributed to an imbalance between cruise ship and stop over visitors, with the former surging way past the latter.
At the end of January, 302,636 cruise ship visitors had already visited these shores, a 7.6 percent increase over the same period last year.
“We need more hotel rooms to be built. We need to have an assortment, like boutique hotels. We have to be able to offer the visitor the five star, the four star, the three star. We have to be able to ensure that everyone could come to The Bahamas,” the minister said.
But officials want to attract more land based visitors who, according to the figures, tend to spend more.
An important element in doing that, tourism officials have conceded, is improving the product; adding more hotel rooms, enhancing amenities like the billion dollar plan to upgrade Cable Beach and redevelop downtown Nassau and improving the service provided by tourism workers.
The government has been in overdrive working to attract mega foreign investment projects which could serve as anchor developments all over The Bahamas and boost the economies of the Family Islands in particular.
Last September the tourism sector was dealt a heavy blow with the trail of destruction that Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne left behind, especially on the island of Grand Bahama.
The latest Central Bank of The Bahamas report noted that external sector inflows moderated as tourism activity in Grand Bahama remained significantly below trend. The most recent data for January 2005 reveal that although tourist arrivals outpaced the previous year, air arrivals contracted, owing to a sizeable falloff in Grand Bahama activity.
But given the outlook for continued expansion in tourism and foreign investments, the report said, support for the fiscal sector is expected to firm over the remainder of this fiscal year.
The tourism minister was optimistic about the Cable Beach redevelopment proposed by the Baha Mar consortium and its potential to positively impact the tourism industry.
“I think people are anxious about what’s going to happen. I think we all agree that if we are going to be in a competitive world, The Bahamas has to step up its product,” he said. “We have to nurture our number one industry and ensure that it is being supported.”
By: Tameka Lundy, The Bahama Journal
