PaJoe told me that if Cuba ever opens up to American tourist, The Bahamas is finished. He also told me that if Jamaica could solve its crime problem, it would shake tourist arrivals to The Bahamas.
I asked PaJoe why he felt that way. He said he knew this to be true because The Bahamas’ tourism product is too narrow, too mean spirited, too dirty, too rude and too expensive. I told PaJoe that he was too crazy for an old man!
I asked PaJoe what he would do differently if he were director general of tourism or minister of tourism for this country. PaJoe looked at me as if I was a donkey’s last child. He was not giving out any more ideas that these politicians could steal and then call their own, he said.
From now on, PaJoe said, he will get paid for his ideas.
I told PaJoe that he was being mean spirited and that his ideas came to him freely so he should give them away freely. PaJoe told me not to preach to him about what he should or should not giver for free or otherwise. According to PaJoe I should preach to those New York ad agencies that get millions upon millions of the Bahamian people’s money every year for doing ka-ka.
Still I couldn’t let PaJoe get away with that. I know that PaJoe loves this country and want to see it succeed, so I pressed him to offer a few suggestions about the tourism product. This is what PaJoe told me:
Move the Ministry of Tourism down to the Fish Fry location and don’t put any bathrooms in their offices. Their bathrooms should be at least two hundred feet away from their offices and they should have to cross the street to get to them.
Give every tourist entering this country a $3.00 note that is redeemable only in Family Island business or in business in Bain’s Town, Fox Hill, Over-the-Hill and other selected areas.
Invite a celebrity (Hollywood) guest to be the guest of honour at Xmas and New Year’s Junkanoo parades.
Have an international festival in the middle of Bay Street one weekend every year.
Have a reenactment of Pirates on Fort Charlotte one weekend every month.
Put on a shell collecting, fly fish tournament and low water sporting event at South Beach once a month in the area of the pools.
Have a Nassau to Paradise Island Fun Run for locals and tourist once a month. The front winners will get prizes of dinners in fancy restaurants and casino chips.
Clean up Potters Cay Dock and have a cultural show there one Saturday a month.
Rent canoes and paddleboats in a restricted area of Montague Beach and Fort.
Sell tourist a ? price voucher that they can give to family members or friends back home. These vouchers will be redeemable in small treasures hotels/motels only.
Hire one hundred flower girls to pass out hibiscus flowers to tourists at the docks and at the airport. Each month a different 100 girls will be used in this program and they should earn enough for this short part-time job to buy books and have lunch money for that month.
Every tourist boy 12 years or under should be introduced to a Bahamian boy of the same age in a buddy-buddy program. The Bahamian boy should adopt a stray pot-cake dog that he takes care of and introduce his dog to the tourist boy as well. These boys could fly kites, spin tops, make gamalie boats and other light craft together and booths and stalls set up from fish fry to the top of Fort Charlotte.
Engage 1,000 prisoners in a clean storefront programme so that they can clean, paint, plant trees and decorate East Street from the Welcome Centre to the beach at South Beach.
These prisoners (first offenders only please), will be given a day off prison time for every day that they work on this clean-up, paint-up program.
There can be 1,000 stalls of various goods and foodstuff lined on the east walk that will be offered to tourists walking from Bay St. to South Beach. These tourists will be in groups of ten with a paid walk-tour guide.
It should be an offence to cut down guinip, sour sop, dilly, tamarind, and other native bearing fruit trees.
Woe! Woe! I had to almost slap PaJoe to get him to stop talking. And this was the man who wasn’t going to say anything to help tourism.
I don’t have space to tell you about the village huts and senior citizens story telling centres that he proposed for Fox Hill and elsewhere. I suppose I’d have to tell you about those later.
Boy, that old man can run his mouth!
By: Rupert Missick, The Bahama Journal
