By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Nassau/Paradise Island hotel industry has enjoyed its “best quarter performance for seven years” during the first three months of 2015, with occupancies ahead of year-before comparisons through April.

The ‘minutes’ for the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association’s (BHTA) April Board meeting, which have been seen by Tribune Business, reveal that Nassau’s large hotels saw a significant collective improvement in all key indicators.

For the two months to end-February 2015, average Nassau/Paradise Island occupancy rates stood at 70.5 per cent compared to 62.3 per cent in 2014.

And the improvement continued through the next two months, informed sources subsequently told Tribune Business, with average occupancy rates of 85 per cent and 81 per cent for March and April 2015, respectively, continuing to remain ahead of their 2014 comparatives of 80 per cent and 75 per cent.

As for revenue per available room (RevPAR), the Nassau/Paradise Island hotel industry saw an almost-$36 increase for the first two months of 2015, with this indicator rising from $153.35 to $189.08.

And average daily room rate (ADR) for the period to end-February stood at $268.11, compared to $246.20 the year before, indicating some pricing power has returned to the market,

For the first two months of 2015, this translated into a collective 11 per cent room revenue increase for Nassau/Paradise Island hotels, with air arrivals and room nights sold up year-over-year by 9 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively.

All this created what Stuart Bowe, the BHTA’s president, described as the sector’s best financial performance since the 2008 first quarter, which was just before the global recession struck.

“Nassau/PI had experienced strong average results in both occupancy and ADR,” the BHTA minutes said. “It was, in fact, the best quarter performance seen in seven years.”

Despite the ongoing concerns and uncertainty surrounding Baha Mar, the BHTA report said the Holiday Inn (the former Nassau Palm) on West Bay Street was set to open in August 2015.

And the Warwick property, the former Paradise Island Harbour Resort, is due to open in the 2015 fourth quarter as a four-star resort with 240 rooms.

Setting aside the issues at Cable Beach, the performance of existing Nassau/Paradise Island properties and the opening of others does provide some optimism for further Bahamian economic recovery and the performance of its largest industry.

The trends appear to have carried over to the rest of the Bahamas. Dean Spychella, the BHTA”s Out Islands vice-president, said their first quarter performance “reflected the same strong first quarter figures for occupancy and ADR”.

Harbour Island was said have produced “very strong results”, with Valentine’s Resort and Marina “well up in advanced deposits going into the summer”.

This optimism was tempered somewhat by Kerry Fountain, the Out Islands Promotion Board’s executive director, who described their tourism performance as a ‘tale of two cities’ due to differences in airlift adequacy.

“Where lift was adequate, hotels succeeded. Where lift was not available, hotels suffered,” the BHTA report said.

On Grand Bahama, boosted by the Memories resort, the average daily room rate (ADR) had fallen by $17.37 year-over-year, dropping from $84.32 in the first two months of 2014 to $66.95 this time around.

However, occupancy rates were up by 9.31 percentage points for the two months to end-February 2015, standing at 62.4 per cent compared to 53.09 per cent.

And Grand Bahama’s occupied rooms were up by 21,629 at 70,554, compared to 48,925 in 2014, while available rooms for the first two months of 2015 had increased by 20,914 to 113,068.

The sector’s room revenues were up by $598,147 year-over-year, standing at $4.724 million compared to $4.125 million, but pricing softness was further shown by the RevPAR decline from $44.77 to $41.78.