By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ tourism rebound is seeing “first class fill up before economy class”, a Cabinet minister said yesterday, estimating that as much as 80 percent of the industry’s economic impact has returned.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, used the aircraft analogy to illustrate to the Eleuthera Business Outlook conference that the higher-end segment of the tourism market had rebounded faster from COVID-19 than the likes of the mass market destination resorts.

With visitors staying longer and spending more, he suggested that while arrivals figures for June had rebounded to 70 percent of pre-COVID levels, the economic impact of that spend was somewhat greater.

“In the first six months of 2021, just over 400,000 stopover visitors came to The Bahamas,” Mr D’Aguilar said. “That was 38 percent of the stopover visitors that came to The Bahamas in the record year of 2019. While that number may seem low, the number of arrivals is increasing every month.”

Pointing out that June’s 135,000 arrivals were equal to 70 percent of 2019 numbers, he added: “Every month, more and more visitors are coming to The Bahamas. The difference between 2019 arrivals and 2021 arrivals is decreasing with each passing month.”

Asserting that The Bahamas was benefiting from high US COVID-19 vaccination rates, which were giving Americans confidence to travel once again to nearby countries such as this nation, Mr D’Aguilar said: “What we are finding is the economic impact of tourism’s rebound is greater that the numbers may initially indicate.

“The number of arrivals in June 2021 may represent 70 percent of the arrivals in 2019, but what we are finding is visitors are staying longer and spending more. The more exclusive component of the tourism product is rebounding more quickly, and the spending is probably closer to 80 percent of what it was.”

The minister said the Family Islands, with their emphasis on high-end, boutique and exclusive hotels and tourism product, was a major beneficiary of this trend. While the Family Islands had accounted for just 20 percent of tourist arrivals in the 2019 first half, they enjoyed a 35 percent share during the same period in 2021.

The best performing Family Island destination was Eleuthera, with a 27 percent share of the latter percentage, followed by Bimini at 20 percent and Abaco at 19 percent. Mr D’Aguilar attributed Bimini’s status to the boating traffic that comes across from Florida, and Abaco’s to the loyalty of its second homeowners post-Dorian.

“If you want to think of The Bahamas as an aircraft, first class is filling up before economy class,” he added. Mr D’Aguilar also launched a lengthy defence of The Bahamas’ health travel visa, which has come under sustained attack as an extra tax and unnecessary red tape from the Opposition Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and others, in what was a repeat of his House of Assembly performance from the previous night.

“I have heard the PLP say that this is unnecessary,” Mr D’Aguilar told Parliament on the health travel visa. “Let the airlines do the checking, they say. Really? You want some airline check-in person, resident in a part of the world who probably does not give a hoot about our entry protocols and how important we consider them, cast a cursory glance over a test and then clear them to enter The Bahamas?

“Mr Speaker, I don’t know what you think but that is scary to me. I feel so much more comfortable that our people, including doctors from the Ministry of Health, are checking the documents to ensure that they are the right test, with the right result, within the right time period, from an accredited laboratory. Can you imagine an airline check-in person doing all of that? Really?”

Mr D’Aguilar argued that the health travel visa has “proven an important component in our arsenal of measures deployed to navigate this ever-evolving pandemic”. He added: “As the virus evolves, changing the rules for entry into The Bahamas, as we have been doing, via the health visa is the most efficient way to make it happen.

“If you wish to change your entry rules using the way that the PLP proposes can you imagine the complexities - one would also say the impossibilities - of making that happen. Think about how you would roll out those changes to the hundreds of thousands of airline check-in personnel. A formula for disaster. Never happen. Never work. 

“I had reason to have lunch with senior Carnival Cruise Line personnel Thursday past. Their senior executives, who are constantly moving from destination to destination in the Caribbean, resoundingly reported that the Bahamas Health Visa is the best - the best - and the easiest to use health visa in the Caribbean and they commended the Ministry of Tourism for a job well done.”