By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Bay Street merchants yesterday revealed they are bracing for at least a 50 percent sales hit due to the 30-day cruise industry shutdown as several mull closures amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Maria Liminatis, the Fashion Centre’s general manager, told Tribune Business: “We have not seen a sales fall-off yet, but it’s uncharted territory so we really don’t know. Thankfully I still have my local customers, so perhaps we may see a 40 to 50 percent drop in sales.”

Ms Liminatis said she has no plans to close her business yet, nor does she have any intention of making her one staff member redundant. “We’re just praying and hoping that this virus will come to an end soon and we can go back to our regular lives,” she added.

Maria Mousis, the International Jewellery store and Athena Cafe’s general manager, said: “For the last two weeks you have seen a drop in business, and we will have to send home staff. We may have to close down because we expect a 50 to 60 percent drop-off in sales in the next two weeks.

“We are going to wait and see how this week is going to be before we make that final decision - whether it is worth being open or not and, if we do, it will be with less staff. At the moment we have the staff members downstairs, and about 15 staff members altogether. The uncertainty.... if it is downsizing staff, at the moment it may be half, but we have to wait and see.

“I think our greatest fear is that in the event that business closes and staff are not working, and no income is coming in, the government is going to have to improvise and have a hold on mortgages and different payments and credit cards and things like that. We need to know.”

Rebecca Boa, general manger for the Bearded Clam restaurant, added: “We may lose some 80 percent of our business because the cruise ship industry is the main industry for downtown. We rely a lot on the cruise ship passengers.”

While the restaurant has not witnessed a slowdown in business much yet, it started to feel the impact yesterday because all the cruise ships docked at Prince George Wharf contained no passengers but “just crew members”.

Ms Boa added: “We are playing it by ear right now. We are seeing what’s going on, and I plan to stay open. If we could get some hotel business and some downtown local business, but our hours will definitely be cut. We don’t plan on closing just yet.”

She said it was too early to determine if staff will have to be made redundant, but added: “Hopefully we will wake up and this dream will be over.”

Vijay Baksani, general manager at Joann Souvenirs, said: “As our main income is tourism it will be tough for all, but that is a step government must take as the virus gets more dangerous and is spreading very fast, so it will be great to take that step.

As to how much he expects to lose as a result of the cruise ship industry shutdown, Mr Baksani said: “I can’t tell you the exact figure. I guess it will be more than 50 percent because the cruise ships are going to be blocked, and that is the main source of income.”

He said the business has not taken any decision regarding laying-off staff, and added: “Today it was supposed to be no ships, but still we got four cruises, so if it is going to be two or three ships for the next few days we will se how it goes, but the staff is going on the regular times. Last week was very slow, even though there were ships, but the number of people was not like before.”

Back-of-the-envelope” calculations by Tribune Business, using arrivals figures from March 2019, give an insight into the potential economic impact from the cruise industry shutdown alone. Some 547,464 cruise passengers visited The Bahamas during that month last year, based on Ministry of Tourism data employed by the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA).

Multiplying that number by $18, representing the per head departure tax that the Government stands to earn, indicates that the sector’s 30-day shutdown will cost the Government some $9.854m from this one revenue stream alone. It does not include all the Value-Added Tax (VAT) that the Public Treasury would also stand to earn from cruise passenger spending.

Using the $70 to $131.95 range, representing the per capita cruise passenger spending figures provided by the Government and cruise industry, respectively, suggests The Bahamas will lose between $38.322m and $72.238m in economic impact due to the shutdown.

Should it be prolonged beyond 30 days, a sector that delivered 5.4m or 75 percent of The Bahamas’ total 7.2m visitors in 2019 will be under threat. With tourism accounting for both 50 percent of Bahamian jobs and economic output, the cruise industry closure - combined with the drop-off in stopover visitors - represents a potentially huge blow that will spare no Bahamian or resident.

A Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) report has estimated that the cruise industry supports 9,004 direct and indirect jobs in The Bahamas, “paying wage income of $155.7m, with total wages being the highest among the 36 destinations.

“Thus, in The Bahamas, every $1m in direct cruise tourism expenditures generated 22 jobs throughout the island’s economy which paid an average annual wage of about US$17,300,” it added.