By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s COVID enforcers have eased the mask-wearing mandate for cruise ship passengers as vessel occupancy for Nassau berths hit a post-pandemic record of 91 percent last Friday.

Michael Maura, the Nassau Cruise Port’s chief executive, told Tribune Business that “very productive conversations” with the Government had resulted in the COVID-19 police allowing passengers to remove their masks while outdoors after strict enforcement of this mandate resulted in some returning to their ships and not patronising cruise-dependent businesses.

US federal health regulators, in a March 14, 2022, missive said persons no longer need wear masks on board cruise ships where there is sufficient distance between themselves and others, and Mr Maura said The Bahamas needs to ensure its own policies match global standards and enable its tourism industry to remain competitive.

“Those protocols permit cruise passengers to not wear a mask in open spaces on cruise ships,” he explained of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. “Those passengers are arriving in their thousands at Nassau Cruise Port and other ports throughout the Caribbean, and disembarking ship.

“When they land here, and are walking on the breeze and open air, they’re not wearing a mask. There’s no need for them to wear a mask in the open air. We’ve had discussions with the COVID police from a couple of weeks ago because, as passengers were exiting the cruise port, they had COVID police approaching them telling them they had to wear a mask outside. Those persons were simply going back to the ship.

“In very productive conversations with government representatives, the COVID police agreed to discontinue approaching persons outside and requiring them to wear a mask.” While cruise passengers will no longer have to wear a mask when walking outside on Bay Street or Junkanoo Beach, Mr Maura said they will still have to carry one with them at all times if they wish to enter and patrionise retail and restaurant enterprises.

“We are communicating with cruise passengers that when they go into a store or eat in a restaurant, they have to carry a mask on their person because they will have to wear when when shopping or entering the restaurant prior to being seated,” he added. “Every time these ships are arriving, it’s new passengers that were not here the day or week before. They are happy to meander through town and go to the beach, so people are enjoying themselves.”

The treatment of cruise passengers when it comes to COVID mask wearing has thus been brought into line with that for the Bahamian hotel industry. The Government relaxed the hotel industry’s mask mandate such that guests no longer have to wear one in hotel lobbies, corridors and casinos where there is sufficient distance between themselves and non-family members, or outside on hotel grounds.

Mr Maura, meanwhile, revealed that the four cruise ships who called at Nassau Cruise Port last Friday brought with them the highest collective passenger occupancy level since the global pandemic began just over two years ago. “Five [now six] days ago we had 91 percent occupancy, the highest since COVID began,” he revealed. “We’ve been climbing, and 91 percent represents the highest occupancy on cruise ships on that day.”

The number was achieved by four vessels - the MSC Meraviglia; the Disney Magic; Carnival Mardi Gras; and Carnival Horizon. The four accounted for a combined 13,919 passengers, and took the average cruise vessel occupancy for March 2022 to-date to 69 percent.

“We’re climbing back, which is very positive news,” Mr Maura added. “We’re getting there. Being at almost 70 percent means there’s another 30 percent to go. I have no doubt that we’re going to be at 80 percent or upwards at the end of April, and going into summer we will be at 100 percent. It’s positive.”

Getting all passengers to disembark when in Nassau, and increasing their per capita spending yield, remain key challenges for the Bahamian tourism industry. However, passenger occupancy for cruise ships calling on Nassau has now increased further from the 65 percent it stood at in early March, which was then the highest level it has been at since transient voyages resumed towards the end of 2021.

Vessel occupancy levels, which stood at 52 percent in October, increased to 64 percent for December 2021 before falling to a low of 45 percent in January due to the Omicron-related COVID surge. Global Ports Holding, Nassau Cruise Port’s 49 percent controlling shareholder, said in a recent statement that that February 2022 vessel calls to Nassau Cruise Port exceeded those during the same month in 2019 - a record-breaking year for tourism arrivals, which saw 5.4m cruise passengers visit The Bahamas, and the last full year pre-pandemic.

“Continued positive momentum can be seen in our cruise calls for January and February 2022. On a like-for-like basis, they were only 9 percent below the same period in 2019, with Nassau Cruise Port actually welcoming more ships in February 2022 than in February 2019,” it said. Nassau Cruise Port received 102 vessel calls this February as opposed to 95 during the same month in 2019 - a rise of 7.4 percent.