![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/bahamas-business-confidence-down.jpg\" "\\"bahamas-business-confidence-down\\"")
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The Bahamas has been \u201closing stopover market share\u201d to rival Caribbean destinations ever since the recession hit in 2008, its share of the region\u2019s land-based tourists having fallen by more than one percentage point over a four-year period.<\/p>\n
And Moody\u2019s, the Wall Street credit rating agency, warned that the Bahamian hotel\/tourism industry\u2019s market share loss was \u201cmore pronounced\u201d if Mexico and Central America were factored into the mix.<\/p>\n
When ranked alongside other Caribbean nations only, Moody\u2019s said Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) data showed that the Bahamas\u2019 share of total stopover visitors to the Caribbean had fallen from 8.8 per cent in 2008 to 8.1 per cent in 2010, then slid further to just 7.6 per cent in 2011.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the Dominican Republic saw its share of Caribbean stopovers rise from 23.9 per cent in 2008 to 24.5 per cent in 2011, while Cuba\u2019s went from 14.1 per cent to 15.4 per cent. Jamaica and Puerto Rico, too, the other nations with a market share larger than the Bahamas, also saw their share of Caribbean stopovers increase over the same four-year period.<\/p>\n
What this all suggests is that the Bahamas\u2019 market positioning, as a high-end, high-cost destination, is working against it at a time when price-conscious travellers are constantly seeking cheap deals.<\/p>\n
Moody\u2019s said: \u201cThe erosion of the country\u2019s competitive position explains why tourism revenues have yet to recover to 2007 levels. Average daily tourist revenues are down as hotels and airlines continue to offer deep discounts to attract consumers. Tourism earnings have been depressed also by shorter visits and lower spending per visitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecovery in tourism has been weak due to low growth in the US and greater regional competition. Total tourist arrivals have been increasing since 2009, but stopover visitors, which generate higher revenues than cruise visitors, are still 12 per cent below their 2007 peak.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the $2.6 billion Baha Mar project was set to increase the Bahamas\u2019 total hotel room inventory by 10 per cent when completed in late 2014, Moody\u2019s warned that \u201cits overall economic impact remains ambiguous as additional capacity may cannibalise the market share of existing hotels\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since the 2008 recession, The Bahamas has been losing stopover market share to rival Caribbean destinations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[100,25,33,73],"class_list":["post-29728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-caribbean-2","tag-hotels","tag-tourism","tag-travel-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}