{"id":36360,"date":"2013-06-04T09:13:18","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T13:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=36360"},"modified":"2013-06-04T09:13:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T13:13:18","slug":"bahamas-tourism-is-starving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2013\/06\/bahamas-tourism-is-starving","title":{"rendered":"Bahamas Tourism Is Starving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bahamian tourism is ‘starving’ because it has both failed to develop a unique product, a well-known architect believes, and not invested in creating key ‘attractions’.<\/p>\n

Pat Rahming, of Pat Rahming & Associates, told Tribune Business that while the Bahamas had potential tourism product ‘coming out of its ears’, much of it was ‘locked away in a warehouse with three padlocks on it’.<\/p>\n

And he explained that rather than focus on developing one-of-a-kind \u2018attractions’, the Bahamas had instead concentrated the bulk of its tourism investments in the infrastructure that supported them – accommodation (hotels) and transportation.<\/p>\n

Pointing to the ‘dilapidated’ state of Nassau’s few land-based attractions, such as the forts and Water Tower, Mr Rahming likened Bahamian tourism to a shop with little inventory on its shelves.<\/p>\n

Arguing that \u2018attractions’ were the equivalent of tourism’s ‘cash register’, Mr Rahming said of these shortcomings: ‘That’s why we’re losing our shirts, and other people are eating our lunch.’<\/p>\n

His thoughts offer a new perspective on why some believe the Bahamas’ tourism competitiveness is slip-sliding away, a perception reinforced by a Tribune Business report last week.<\/p>\n

The Tribune reported that stopover visitors’ share of total foreign arrivals to the Bahamas had slipped from around 31-32 per cent pre-recession to around 24-25 per cent for the past four years. In raw terms, this means that high yielding stopover visitors (spending over $1,000 per head) have declined from one out of every three visitors to one out of every four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A local businessman believes Bahamian tourism is starving because it has failed to develop a unique product and has not invested in creating key attractions.<\/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":[33],"class_list":["post-36360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36360","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=36360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}