By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A senior Ministry of Tourism official yesterday revealed a 99 percent year-over-year arrivals drop for June 2020 despite opening up to private air and sea visitors half-way through.

Dr Kenneth Romer, the Ministry of Tourism’s executive director of product quality and support, told a webinar: “The Bahamas has seen only 3,900-plus, shy of 4,000 air and sea arrivals, a decline of 99.4 percent compared to June 2019. Air arrivals to The Bahamas as a whole declined by 99 percent, standing only at 1,700.”

Statistics provided by Dr Romer showed a total of 641,140 air and sea arrivals for June 2019 compared to just 3,935 for 2020. Air arrivals alone stood at168,392 for 2019 compared to just 1,705 for 2020.

The June drop-off comes as little surprise given that The Bahamas had only reopened for the private aviation and boating niches, with the rest of the sector following on July 1 in a revival that has now been cut short. However, some observers may argue that this nation is losing relatively little business by imposing a 14-day quarantine on all visitors coming to this nation to control COVID-19’s spread.

Mr Romer added: “We are once again almost effectively closed, because the reality is not many visitors are going to come here to quarantine for 14 days. With the average amount of stopover days [in The Bahamas] only six-and-a-half days, the average visitor is not coming here for a quarantine vacation.

“So air arrivals during the month of June were down at all major islands. The reality is that stopover arrivals that contributed to 1.78m visitors for us last year, considerably contributing to our GDP, have effectively stopped. That is where we are really as a nation.”

Dr Romer said that until international travel picks back up again, The Bahamas needs to first “do domestic tourism better”. He added: “Persons must feel the love when they enter out country, and we are not just talking about our international visitors. Mama said that charity begins at home and ends abroad.

“So how do we treat ourselves as domestic visitors when we visit our Family Islands? We are not importing the tourism product. We are basically in our country, domestically, looking at ways to support our island. How do we treat each other domestically when we go on our fast ferries and our boats; when we go into Exuma to swim with the pigs?

“How do we now treat persons from among our country when we go into Long island to run sheep, or go into Eleuthera to visit our pineapple fields. How do we treat them when we go to Andros for the crab fest? There must be an exceptional and authentic experience for visitors, both domestic and international, with emphasis on the stopover visitors and also our domestic tourism.”

As for the Ministry of Tourism’s plans, Dr Romer said: “We want to aggressively grow tourism numbers. We want to engage new source markets. We are going to focus on the luxury segment, and our key niche markets. We want to inspire visitors to return to the islands as life-long brand ambassadors. These are the key priorities for 2022.”

He encouraged tourism industry participants in the webinar to be “passionate” about the Bahamian product, and said those who are “passionate about the product will find a way to succeed”.