By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Opposition leader yesterday doubled down on fears this nation is “celebrating economic suicide” with The Bahamas the only Caribbean country suffering a stopover visitor decline in 2024’s first four months.

Michael Pintard, in a column circulated to the media, drew on data from the Tourism Analytics website to back his assertion that The Bahamas faces “devastating implications” from cruise tourism’s rapid growth after it was shown stopover visitors to this nation fell by 2.8 percent year-over-year to end-April 2024.

Total stopovers, likely defined as visitors who spent more than 24 hours in the destination, thus excluding transient visitors, day trippers and those passing through, were shown by Tourism Analytics to have fallen from 669,161 during the same period in 2023 to 650,371 this year.

The different definitions of ‘stopover’ and ‘air arrivals’ likely explains why the Ministry of Tourism’s recent presentation shows a 3.9 percent increase in air arrivals for the first five months of 2024 to end-May, with numbers up from 790,368 in 2023 to 821,334.

Mr Pintard, though, used the Tourism Analytics data to argue that The Bahamas is losing higher-spending stopover visitors to the cruise industry with the result that the economic impact of the country’s largest industry is being reduced. This, he argued, is masked by the focus on arrivals numbers which is largely being driven by the cruise ships and their private islands.

The Opposition leader, who has already clashed with Chester Cooper, deputy prime minister and minister of tourism, investments and aviation on the issue, wrote: “The numbers clearly show that as cruise passenger numbers rise and we giddily celebrate record-breaking arrivals, our stopovers fall.

“The simple fact is that our stopover visitors are rapidly being converted to cruise passengers with devastating implications for our economy. Using data presented at the Ministry of Tourism’s July 5 press conference, for every 6 percent conversion - representing a loss of 100,000 stopovers - our economy loses around $250m or a quarter of a billion in visitor spending.

Describing this as the “great conversion”, Mr Pintard said the evidence supporting his assertion is “incontrovertible”. He added: “In 2023, while nine other countries in the region, led by Turks & Caicos, grew their stopovers by up to 36 percent over 2019, our previous best year, stopovers in The Bahamas grew by 0 percent (compared to pre-COVID).

“All of The Bahamas’ increase in our record-breaking year for visitor arrivals were cruise passengers. As of April 2024, The Bahamas is in last place in our region concerning stopover visitor growth. In fact, for the first four months, stopovers to The Bahamas are behind stopovers for last year. These comparisons have been taken from tourismanalytics.com.”

Referring to 2023, Mr Pintard added: “If, like Turks & Caicos, all of The Bahamas’ 33 percent increase in visitors were stopovers, visitor spending would have increased by $6.2bn. Unfortunately, they were all cruise passengers, so the spending increase was only $168m - a $6bn difference. The gulf between stopover spending and cruise passenger spending is staggering.

Describing the constant focus on arrivals numbers as “deliberately masking the elephant in the room”, he said: “Those in denial do not wish to acknowledge that the growth of cruise visitors and the fall-off of stopovers are inter-related.

“They do not wish to recognise that the biggest threat to our tourism economy is the continued conversion of stopovers to cruise passengers. Doing so would force them to acknowledge that they have been celebrating economic suicide.

“Instead, they attribute the lack of growth of stopovers to the loss of hotel rooms between 2019 and today, even though, unlike the cruise lines, our current hotel rooms are far from 100 percent occupancy.” Mr Cooper, who previously branded Mr Pintard’s concerns as “utter nonsense”, has already said he wants to double The Bahamas’ hotel room numbers by 15,000 over the next decade.

Addressing the Opposition leader’s concerns on the matter previously, he said: “After reading his comments about tourism revenue dropping despite having more visitor arrivals, I can categorically state he is speaking utter nonsense.”

Mr Cooper added that stopover arrivals grew by 17 percent overall last year compared to 2022, and 3.5 percent over 2019. And, in the first quarter of 2024, they also grew by over 3.5 percent.

However, Mr Pintard said yesterday: “Could it be that other destinations are growing their much more economically valuable land-based tourism while The Bahamas continues to celebrate lower-spending cruise visitors?

“The truth is that amenity-laden mega-ships of today are far different from ships of bygone ages. Each one has more sleeping rooms than Baha Mar, more restaurants, more bars and more entertainment. They have multiple pools, meeting rooms, water slides, neighbourhoods, multiple suites and more ocean-view rooms.

“The Bahamas has happily added the one thing they had missing: Private beaches and the magnificent ocean waters of our private islands. Such amenities can be provided at prices far lower than a land-based vacation in The Bahamas with comparable amenities,” he added.

“And with operating costs for utilities and labour far lower than those for land-based hotels, the profitability of cruise companies has skyrocketed since the end of the pandemic. Both land-based and cruise-based tourism can co-exist profitably in The Bahamas. However, the current and devastating problem for the Bahamian economy cannot be solved by those in denial.”