Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU) President, Pat Bain, said while he celebrates the Bahamas as the number one vacation stop for “stay over” and “cruise arrivals” among the English speaking Caribbean countries, he would feel a whole lot better if the Ministry of Tourism (MOT), could find the right formula to encourage stop over visitors.
“Stop over visitors have not increased in the past four years and hotel properties, are feeling it in the pocket,” Mr Bain claimed.
He said despite the recent statistics released by the MOT, in addition to a report from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), which promoted The Bahamas as number one, among English-speaking Caribbean countries in “stay over and cruise arrivals,” properties such as Radisson Cable Beach, Wyndham Nassau Resort, Nassau Beach, and the Hilton Hotels, have all reduced the work week to three days, in the past few weeks.
“It leaves one to question this purported boom in tourism and also begs the questions who is it that tourism is courting? Are they after the cruise ship passengers, where the numbers are impressively large but where such visitors are not known to be big spenders in the economy?” questioned the BHCAWU chief.
Mr Bain asked whether tourism is cooking up a real “workable strategy” to better target and increase the numbers that really count and benefit the country.
In its “Stay Over and Cruise Arrivals” report, the Caribbean Tourism Organi-sation had determined that The Bahamas is with more than 1.7 million cruise ship passengers and 800,000 stop-over tourists, leading in the total tourism arrivals, to the English-speaking Caribbean, for the first six months of 2005.
The report shows that The Bahamas received 826,500 stop over tourists, and 1,728,895 cruise ship passengers, from January to June of this year. However, these numbers indicated a 2.5 per cent drop in stop over visitors and a 5.7 drop, in cruise ship passengers compared to the same period last year.
“How do you convince me that the numbers are getting better with each passing year and still major hotels are filing letters to the union, informing that the work week for employees has been cut down to three days, because of poor occupancy levels?” Mr Bain questioned.
He remarked that there are 20,000 hotel workers employed throughout the country as hospitality workers and Tourism has a responsibility to see to it that the occupancy levels in local hotelS remain in a healthy state. “It’s no use bragging about big numbers of arrivals or winning awards for the same, but can show nothing tangible for it when it come right down to dollars and cents,” Mr Bain said.
Keva Lightbourne, The Nssau Guardian
