1. Ban Cruise Ships

2. Banks and other investors will finance hotels since they will know a market demand is now guaranteed as people who wish to come to the Bahamas now must do so via hotel.

3. Likely other places will follow, just like we'd be following Key West.

The rest will take care of itself. The "Bahamas" is the product, not commercial parks as such. People who want parks will go to Orlando or Las Vegas, that isn't what we have to offer and they will always have better parks and attractions eg. Disney World. We need to stop selling the Bahamas on the cheap to the cruise industry for $50 or so per person in spend. This is not rocket science.

PS. If Disney wants to build an on Nassau theme park with hotels, and rides and whatever else the government should say this is something it will negotiate, but its path to the Bahamas via cruise ships should be closed by government.

The barrier to Cruise ship tour offerings is the prohibitively high cost of their Liability insurance,
which must be purchased from their in house insurance co. (captive $$ stream, 2 mil liability policy) and their insane onboard booking tour markup.
Ya'll have yet to understand their business model. SEt up a mega shop and pay no rent, and worse get concessions. Ingraham made the first fatal mistake with allowing on board concessions to remain open in port. (casinos, bars, resturants, etc) They must've seen him coming a mile away. Want to reset the model?
You are going to have to.

Dionisio.dude. You are more lost than I could possibly have imagined...small focused tourism is what thrives...employs more people...garners more consumer spending and tax dollars... do you really want to franchise our nation? turn it into a experienced based theme park for the masses? McBahamas? Quality over quantity is always more enduring...stop banging your head you re losing valuable brain cells...

It's all too clear D'Aguilar lacks both common sense and business sense. Operating a chain of public laundromats started by his father is about the most one should expect of him.

LMAO

***Repost:***

Michael Maura more than anyone else knows full well that the entire business model of the cruise ship industry is designed to capture every possible dollar that their ship passengers plan to spend on their cruise vacation. This puts the cruise ship operators/owners in direct competition with the countries visited by the behemoth ships. These monstrous floating hotels now have onboard every attraction, entertainment and eating/drinking facility imaginable.

***It is impossible for land based establishments in countries like ours, with their much higher operating costs, to compete with what these gigantic ships now offer their passengers onboard.*** That's the simple harsh reality and why we must quickly transform our country to a desirable tourist destination for air arrival/hotel staying visitors, visiting yachtsman and guests arriving by private aircraft. These are the big spending tourists who will greatly benefit our economy and improve the lives of Bahamians, not only on New Providence but in the Family Islands as well.

For decades now the cruise ship operators/owners have been taking very unfair advantage of us and will continue doing so if we do not rein in their most corrupt relationship with our incompetent, weak and visionless politicians like Minnis and D'Aguilar. The Bahamas offers the cruise ship operators/owners a few priceless things that they and their passengers highly value but have been allowed by our incompetent and corrupt politicians to take for free. I'm talking about our crystal clear aquamarine waters, our beautiful islands and sandy beaches, and our heavenly skies and abundance of sunshine. Add to this our close geographic proximity to the US and it's no small wonder why we will always be a top destination for the mammoth cruise ships.

But we must immediately end giving our prized environment away for free. We therefore need to start charging the cruise ship companies a daily (yes, daily) passenger head tax of at least $50 and use the tax proceeds to develop and promote an environment conducive to much greater air arrival, land based tourism with stong linkages to new Bahamian owned attractions, shopping and entertainment establishments. This is a must if we are ever going to boost our economy and create decent paying private sector jobs. And the same head tax charged for sea passengers should also apply to air arrival tourists who stay at land-based hotels that are defined to have an 'all-inclusive' business model similar to that of the cruise ship companies.

We must also encourage our fellow Caribbean cruise ship destinations to adopt a stance towards the cruise ship industry similar to that which I am proposing for our own country.

I hope that the Tourism Minister is telling Global Ports & its new set of "home porters" that their predatory methods of starving the on-island side of the cruising industry should not be the MO for the new inter-island cruising trips ........ Will the cruise passengers be spending the usual $50 on trinkets when they go to Exuma, Long Island San Sal or Eleu/Briland etc???

We don't need any of that cheap NP brand of cruise visitors taking root in the Out Islands

I seem to remember someone who was trying to set up an excursion operation on PI very near the lighthouse...

Many countries have sand sea and sunshine, the two areas we need serious improvement in are Quality of service including cleanliness and Bahamian domestic investors. How the hell can we expect foreigners to buy in when we don't or are blocked from doing so, by our own damn Government?

The point that the business model of these behemoth floating hotel owners is such that they will never allow us to compete with them on a level playing field for the tourist dollars in the pockets of their passengers clearly flew way over your head.