The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) may consider The Bahamas the number one vacation stop for stopover and cruise arrivals among English-speaking Caribbean countries, but one official of The Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union believes that the country still has a long way to go in improving these numbers.
While celebrating the achievement, union president, Pat Bain, recently said he would feel a “whole lot better” if the Ministry of Tourism could find the right formula to encourage more stopover visitors.
According to the CTO report, The Bahamas received 826,500 stopover tourists and 1,728,895 cruise ship passengers from January to June of this year.
These numbers however point to a 2.5 percent drop in stopover visitors and a 5.7 drop in cruise ship passengers compared to the same period last year.
In fact, Mr. Bain pointed out that stopover arrivals have not increased in the past four years and some hotel properties are feeling the pinch.
His claims were reportedly based on letters filed to the union from major hotels like the Wyndham Nassau Resort, the Radisson Cable Beach, Nassau Beach and the Hilton, which he claimed have all reduced the work-week for some employees to three days in the past few weeks.
Mr. Bain questioned whether local officials are courting stopover passengers who are known to be the big spenders, or “cooking up a real workable strategy” to better target and increase the number of stopover visitors.
“There are 20,000 hotel workers employed throughout this countryﾅand [the Ministry of] Tourism has a responsibility to see to it that the occupancy levels in local hotels remain in a healthy state,” Mr. Bain said in a press release.
“[There] is no use bragging about big numbers of arrivals or winning awards for the same, but can show nothing tangible for it when it comes right down to dollars and cents.”
He added, “This simply indicates that we should have cause to be concerned. While we are boasting about the most arrivals and stay over visitors during this period, the numbers are also showing that we are losing market share in the same area when compared to the number the past four years. So who is fooling whom?
“We need to get serious and stop playing the number game for good PR. Weﾴve got real work to do. The hotel union is ready for the task and will work with the partners in the sector to make the economic situation better, but we must begin from the premise of truth, not fiction.”
In an interview with the Bahama Journal Tuesday, Director General of Tourism Vernice Walkine conceded that while The Bahamas was very fortunate to receive over five million visitors in 2004, the Ministry must be sensible about what those numbers actually represent considering what actually attributed to the growth.
She explained that most of that growth came by way of cruise visitors particularly due to the fact that The Bahamas is reaping the rewards of a trend where more and more persons are taking more frequent cruises.
“Cruises have become the ideal all-inclusive vacation product and The Bahamas is a natural beneficiary of this trend because we are in a very unique position where there are some ships that only call on The Bahamas because we are ideal in terms of a three or four day itinerary. And this tends to be what people are looking for more often than not nowadays,” Ms. Walkine said.
“The other thing is that in terms of stopover visitors, we continue to try to open up more markets to allow us to benefit from these types of tourists. This is the ideal scenario for usﾅso suffice it to say that business is pretty healthy. We are doing better that we have been doing for a while, but obviously there are a lot of opportunities for us to improve the stopover numbers.”
She said this is exactly what the Ministry of Tourism is determined to do.
“We are attacking the problem from a number of fronts,” Ms. Walkine assured.
“This is exactly why the Ministry of Tourism has restructured itself ﾖ to allow the department to focus on several priority areas like looking at some emerging markets.”
Tourism officials traveled to the Peopleﾴs Republic of China several weeks ago, hoping to establish direct flights between that country and The Bahamas.
At the time, Ms. Walkine indicated that despite Chinaﾴs keen interest and excitement in The Bahamas, “there is no likelihood in the immediate term of nonstop service” between the two countries.
Officials did however propose a short-term solution to the dilemma, one that involves positioning The Bahamas as a viable add-on destination for affluent Chinese nationals.
“There is no getting away from the fact that the Chinese market for outbound travel is going to be the most significant market in the next 10 or 12 years,” Ms. Walkine said.
“They are already beginning to travel in significant numbers and The Bahamas is putting itself in a position to be able to receive that business, which would be significant stopover business for us once we get some things put in place.”
Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
