By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas must “make some changes and quickly if we’re going to save our business” based on “sobering” boating industry feedback, its marina association chief warned yesterday.

Peter Maury, the Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) president, told Tribune Business the message delivered by yacht brokers and management companies at the recent Fort Lauderdale Boat Show was that the growing bureaucracy and red tape involved in entering this nation is combining with higher costs/taxes to undermine its competitive advantage.

Estimating that Bahamian marina occupancies have declined by an average 20 percent in 2024, with some in the southern Family Islands experiencing an even greater drop-off, he warned that this contrasted with increased business volumes for many Caribbean rivals with the Turks & Caicos purportedly up by some 83 percent.

Voicing optimism that recent meetings with Ministry of Tourism officials will generate momentum for the required reforms, Mr Maury told this newspaper that the most important is to create an online ‘one-stop shop’ where visiting boats and charters can obtain all the necessary permits and pay associated fees in a simple, convenient manner.

And he warned that The Bahamas must shake the mentality that “there is nowhere better” for the boating/yachting sector to go with competition intensifying and “so many other countries looking to grab what we gave up”. In particular, the ABM chief said the likes of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are increasingly eager to build their market share in this industry.

“We need to make some changes and quickly if we’re going to save our business,” Mr Maury told Tribune Business of the Boat Show’s main message. “The marinas to the south of us have enjoyed an increase in occupancy and many of the marinas in the Out Islands and Nassau have seen declines in occupancy.”

Blaming this on the cumulative impact from several challenges based on the feedback, he added: “The long and short of it is the cost of coming here, the confusion of getting in and filing taxes, and signing-up and getting cruising permits and this thing of the Immigration extension, and there’s no real sense we are a welcoming place to visit. That’s not what we want in tourism.”

The Government recently implemented a $200 processing fee for tourists seeking to extend their stay in this nation. This appears to require all applicants to now “book an appointment” via the Immigration Department’s website and physically attend in person to obtain the extension of stay. This also has to be accompanied by the cruising permit, proof of payment and contact details.

While the fee itself is hardly onerous, and the measure was foreshadowed when the 2024-2025 Budget was unveiled, Bahamian marinas have argued they were unaware of it and left blindsided by its implementation. They are also arguing that it has added another layer of inconvenience for boaters and their crews.

Mr Maury said the Immigration Department extension needs to be placed online and linked to all the other permit applications and fee payments visiting boaters must make. “I would go back to the system that worked; the online clearance,” he said, referring to the ABM’s SeaZPass portal that the Government requested be closed with no replacement yet to emerge.

“We need something,” the ABM president said. “It has to go back to where you go online, pay your fees, get the permits and move on to get to the resort, get to the Out Islands. That’s what people want to do. They don’t want to be bogged down; to have to run to this office and that office. It’s too much.

“As Bahamians we don’t like doing it but we live here and don’t have a choice. For a visitor, we cannot hold them hostage; they go where they want. In the Mediterranean they have a system that makes it very simple, doing it online and moving through the process. If fees are to be paid, they’ll pay them, but wasting time with visits to offices and things like that, it’s not in their scope of how they want to spend a vacation.

“People came here to see multiple islands. They don’t want to be dragged around to multiple offices. I think the Port [Department] indicated they were a year away from launching their system for fee payment. The Government’s objective should be to collect revenue not make everybody’s life difficult. If we do that, and not put tax on a tax, it will make sense again.”

Mr Maury said the Boat Show’s seminars and other sessions showed The Bahamas is facing ever-fiercer competition as there are “so many places to visit coming online”, with the likes of Saudi Arabia and Dubai investing heavily in boating-related infrastructure.

“We Bahamians like to think The Bahamas is better, but if others are more welcoming to the visitors it’s not going to help us any,” he added. “I met several marina owners on the Pacific Coast of South America all the way down to Peru, and they are building super yacht-size marinas. There’s a lot of new cruising grounds coming on stream.

“We can’t just sit here and expect everybody to pay these higher taxes and fees. It’s a consumer-based business. Once the boats are in country, they’re spending millions every year. I think the estimates for this sector of the hospitality industry is hundreds of millions. It all adds up; food, dockage, gas and restaurants and everything else.

“We’re not seeing the growth right now, which is alarming. Most of the marinas are down 20 percent for the year. Some of these Out Island marinas are reporting higher declines in occupancy. It’s not good. It cuts down on food purchases, electricity purchases, those kinds of things.” 

Mr Maury, who pointed out that fewer boating purchases translates to reduced VAT revenues, said of the Boat Show feedback: “It was very sobering. We always considered ourselves competitive with the Caribbean, but when we hear the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the US Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, their occupancies have increased, and particularly Turks & Caicos.

“They are right next to us. Their occupancies for their operators are up 83 percent and we’re down.” Mr Maury said he spoke to one Turks & Caicos marina, Blue Haven, which is doubling the size of its facility to cater to the increased business. 

“The brokers told us flat out in meetings, seminars and everywhere else that it’s too hard to come to The Bahamas; the yacht management companies said it’s very difficult with the paperwork and bureaucracy we keep adding, and driving people away,” the ABM president added.

“It wasn’t unexpected. We knew we would lose business. Now it’s really affecting us because so many countries are looking to grab what we gave up, and not just our Caribbean neighbours. Once they go through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and the Panama Canal to the Pacific it will be very hard to get them back. I’m hoping we get something changed quickly because the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show kicks off the 2025 season.

“We cannot rely on there being nowhere better to go. We have to reinvigorate The Bahamas. We cannot rely on it being the only place for people to go. I had a meeting with [the Ministry of] Tourism and they seemed to understand we need to make changes. We’ll see how that goes through the bureaucracy.”