Thursday, February 18, 2016
COMING off the heels of winning the World Travel Award for Best Romance Destination in the Caribbean, Ministry of Tourism officials this week launched “From Bahamas With Love” – a new promotion aimed at luring tourists to the country.
During a press conference held at Pompey Square, Deputy Director General of Tourism Ellison ‘Tommy’ Thompson said the promotion comes after the Caribbean Hotel Tourism Association (CHTA) declared “A Year Of Love” in the Caribbean.
“Because it is the year of romance, what we are doing is theming each month in terms of the romance months that we are going after. The month of February will be engagements. When we move into March and April it will be the bachelorette parties. May will be the destination weddings and in June it’s honeymoons,” he said.
In July, officials will focus on vow renewals; August will be “baby moons”; September will be special milestones like wedding anniversaries; October will be romantic getaways; November will be engagements and in December, honeymoon registries will be the focus.
“What we are doing is asking our partners from the Bridal Association, the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotion Board, Grand Bahama Promotion Board and Family Island Promotion Board to give something to feature. That way we will rotate something in all of the Family Islands to ensure that we get the coverage in all of the Family Islands,” Mr Thompson said.
In 2014, romance tourism brought in over 76,000 stopover visitors to The Bahamas.
Mr Thompson said for 2016, officials are hoping to increase that number.
“What we are projecting for 2016 is that we want to increase that to 100,000 over the next two years, and we want to make sure that spreads throughout the islands of the Bahamas. If we get 100,000, we would be looking at $150 million in revenue. If we are looking to get these weddings in the Family Islands in particular – where is it better to have a romantic encounter?”
The deputy director general added that tourism officials are reaching out to several markets.
“We want to make sure we are getting the romance business from all of the areas in the US and Canada. When we look at our statistics, we see that New York, Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas are growing very nicely for us, and one of the surprising markets is California. The interesting thing is we don’t have any non-stop flights from California, but it is growing.”
In 2014, the Ministry of Tourism led the way in the romance market with its “16 Islands, 16 weddings, One Priceless Day” promotion.
This year, the promotion is being duplicated in Canada.
Director of Romance in the Ministry of Tourism Freda Malcolm said these promotions have garnered great benefits for the Bahamas.
“We started our signature bridal events and this is proving to do well for us. We have found from our exit surveys that it really is a multi-billion dollar business. We are really expecting that this campaign will increase our numbers this year,” she said.
Comments
TruePeople says...
ummm “From Bahamas With Love” ...
shouldn't that be the Bahamas?
Posted 18 February 2016, 2:12 p.m. Suggest removal
Drea1 says...
Yes it should. "It's The Bahamas". This is so embarrassing coming from our Ministry of Tourism. For them to launch a campaign where the name of our country is not correct....ugh. I know I should read the news more often but every time I do I feel sick.
Posted 18 February 2016, 3:03 p.m. Suggest removal
BoopaDoop says...
It's ok to hear a foreigner say "Bahamas" but every Bahamian should know our country is The Bahamas as "The Commonwealth of The Bahamas". America is "The United States of America" not just United States.
Posted 18 February 2016, 3:19 p.m. Suggest removal
TalRussell says...
Comrade Deputy Director General of Tourism Ellison ‘Tommy’ Thompson with all due respect may I ask for a clarification cause if your ministry's present math shows that "stopover" tourists spend on an average less than $100 per person, what will the ministry do differently to now generate "$1500" per "stopover" person's spending to get to your $150 million?
Can the ministry of tourism assure taxpayers that the same people launching Karnaval 2016 isn't the same people behind doing the math for “From Bahamland With Love?"
I am told that out of the less than $100 - McDonald's Big Bac's & Fries snatches eats up at least $15 - leaving less than $85 for taxi's, scooter rentals, trip over bridge Atlantis and beach vendors rental towels and to have they hair's braided.
Posted 18 February 2016, 3:21 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
What you forgot is that at the airport departure lounge they pick up a very expensive bottle of Paris Bahamas skin care products http://paris-bahamas.com/en/ Notice that it is not Paris-The Bahamas, just Bahamas.
Here is the kicker. The German woman who owns the company, pays to have sea grape leaves picked in The Bahamas, shipped to France, and processed into skin care products. So the Bahamians who pick the sea grape leaves get peanuts and this woman makes a whole crapload of money. How does this happen?
The German woman dates or was dating a Bahamian architect. She is entrepreneur-minded. The French government invests in her and gives her a grant to hire a French laboratory to study the biology of Bahamian tropical plants. As it turns out, the sea grape leaf has anti-oxidant properties that is way off the scale. Hugely beneficial. So they give her another grant to find ways to process it into cosmetics. That is why sea grape leaves from the Bahamas are shipped to Paris and made into expensive cosmetics and foreigners (again !) yield the profits.
Now if the government invested just one tenth of the money, that they spent on Carnival, or trips to China, or paying for Fweddie's joy junkets around the world, in Bahamians and our natural resources, we wouldn't be braiding hair, or driving half-starving horses hitched to surreys or bugging tourists to ride in our beat-up taxis to make money. We would be hiring beautiful coiffed women to sell expensive cosmetics to women lined up to look younger with Bahamian tropical products.
Of course this is all premised on the fact that we have enough Bahamians who had a good enough education to even know what an anti-oxidant is or a science/discovery/business frame of mind to recognise a business opportunity.
It is still my contention, that the Bahamas is actually rich in natural resources that technology can exploit, but we are too dumb to create the conditions to "mine" this treasure. So instead we come up with cockamamie schemes to entice unsuspecting people to visit the gun-infested limestone rock for some sun, sand & sea. Where's the Love?
Posted 19 February 2016, 6:20 a.m. Suggest removal
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