By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) president is asserting that long-awaited boating fee reforms “might just save our summer season” after the Government delivered on the Prime Minister’s end-February pledge to create two new cruising permit fee categories with reduced levies.
Peter Maury told Tribune Business that marina operators, supporting industries and even boating tourists themselves were initially unsure whether the changes - unveiled by Bahamas Customs late on Tuesday night - were “an April Fool’s joke” with many nervously waiting to see how vessel clearance will be dealt with following yesterday’s implementation.
The reforms to the Customs Management regulations, the product of more than three months of negotiations between the private sector and Ministry of Finance, create two new classes of cruising permit fees - one for short-term stays of 30 days or less, and the other covering six months or less. The 30-day fees for vessels less than 50 feet in length are between 50-70 percent lower than those associated with the pre-existing one-year permit.
Tourism sources told this newspaper that the shorter-term permits, especially the one for 30 days’ duration, “will definitely help Bimini with the weekend warriors”. It will also benefit other northern Bahamas islands whose boating visitor markets are largely made-up of short stay visitors on smaller boats, such as centre consoles, but were deterred by the new and increased fees introduced with last May’s Budget.
Besides the two new cruising permit categories, the Government has also sought to clear-up confusion over whether the anchorage fees implemented with the 2025-2026 Budget apply to both vessels docked in marinas or those anchored out. Materials issued to Customs officers plainly state that these fees must only be paid by the latter, adding: “Only pleasure vessels entering that are not docking at a marina are subject to anchorage fees.”
Mr Maury said Customs’ previous position of levying anchorage fees on boats docked in marinas, despite last May’s Budget amendments stipulating they only applied to vessels “not mooring at a marina”, had only deepened confusion surrounding the reforms and provided a further disincentive to visit The Bahamas. However, the Government has now also revised the anchorage fees to incorporate the two new cruising permit categories, with the charges based on length of vessel and stay.
For example, foreign pleasure vessels less than 30 feet in length - and cleared into The Bahamas on a 30-day cruising permit - will pay a $50 anchorage fee. That is just 25 percent, or one-quarter, of the $200 that boats with a 12-month permit, and less than 50 feet in length, will pay. The reductions are even greater the larger the vessel is, with boats 100 feet or more in length paying a $200 anchorage fee on a 30-day permit - a sum that is less than one-seventh of the $1,500 paid for a 12-month stay.
However, The Bahamas appears to have missed a prime opportunity to market the reforms - and the bid to improve its competitiveness as a boating destination - to brokers, captains, owners and the wider boating industry. The Customs memorandum unveiling the amendments was dated March 29, 2026 - the same day that the five-day Palm Beach Boat Show closed - with marina operators only informed of the changes during the evening of March 31 just hours before they were to take effect.
One source described this as “typical. A day late and a dollar short”. However, Mr Maury and other resort and marina operators yesterday told Tribune Business they were spreading details of the reforms “all over the world as fast as possible”, and the changes were already attracting significant interest and attention from boaters. The ABM president said “the trick” is now for The Bahamas to win back customers it has lost with yacht charter volumes estimated to have declined by 40 percent.
Emanuel Alexiou, the Bahama Out Island Promotion Board’s president, and principal of the Abaco Beach Resort, yesterday told Tribune Business that the industry was “ecstatic” to learn that the reforms have finally been implemented and - echoing Mr Maury - said they may have arrived in time “to hopefully save some June and July business”.
The Government was lobbied to make the changes after marinas warned they would be “happy with 50 percent” of the prior year’s business for the 2025-2026 winter season following the largely negative reaction to the new and increased fees, which were perceived by many overseas boaters as making The Bahamas too expensive and ensnaring the entry process with bureaucracy and red tape.
“It’s what we were asking for,” Mr Maury told this newspaper. “We were saying go back to the 90-day permit, but this works, too. Then, with the 12-month permit, you now get two free re-entries even though the fees stay the same, and with the six-month one you get one free re-entry. That’s a big help. It’s definitely what we were asking for.
“Adding those free entries definitely makes sense. Hopefully it helps quell some of the concerns. That was our big thing. We just wanted it to make sense for everybody. That was the problem in so many cases.
“And if you clear in and are in a marina, you don’t pay that fee. That’s a big help. It saves that extra money. People go out fishing and come back to the marina, and our whole point to the Government and Ministry of Finance was that, if they anchor out, they don’t buy anything. But if they go to the marina, they’re going to restaurants, they’re going to buy ice, they have to pay for water, dockage and electricity that the Government sells to us.
“The Government makes double their money. They sell us power and water, and get VAT on what we sell on to the customers. I think somebody looked at it and said: ‘The numbers from the marinas are down considerably. Let’s get the boats back’.”
Yesterday’s implementation of the two new cruising permit fee categories comes just over one month after Philip Davis KC signalled this would be done in his mid-year Budget statement. “We’re getting the word out as much as we can,” Mr Maury added. “We’ve published it on our sites and in each of our groups. A lot of people are sharing.
“I imagine we might be able to save our summer season unless they change something else. But it’s always the adoption of the policy. The policymakers can say anything. It really depends on how Customs adopts it.” As an example, Mr Maury cited how Customs had over the past nine months charged anchorage fees on boats docked in marinas even though this was the opposite of - and appeared to directly contradict - what the Budget changes stipulated.
“It was 100 percent. Every single case,” he asserted. “In no incident has Customs said we won’t charge you if you’re in a marina. In every single case, every marina operator, every boat captain, has said they’ve charged us no matter what. There was no incentive to come into a marina if you had to pay all those additional fees. You are paying for services never bought or wanted.
“Despite what the people im government may think, wealthy people react the same way the rest of us do. They don’t want to pay for things they don’t use. People say rich people don’t care but I’ve never seen that. Everyone is economically minded. When you get charged for something you don’t use that makes it very unsatisfactory….
“Everybody was calling us yesterday and asking if it [the changes] was real. Even ourselves, the operators, didn’t believe it. Nobody has cleared a yacht yet so we don’t know if Customs officers have been brought up to speed. We’re all waiting to see what happens. It’s pretty sad when we have so many changes that our own customers and businesses don’t want to believe, like it’s an April Fool’s joke. We’ll see in the application. It’s sad we had to get there, but hopefully everything works out and we keep moving ahead.”
Hailing the introduction of the shorter 30-day and six-month cruising permits, Mr Maury said: “We have people coming over for a short amount of time. The previous structure was very unfair for them. If they were coming for 30 days or six months, they were having to pay for a year. The guys coming fishing can now buy the short-term 30 day permit for $250, pay for their one-month fishing permit and off they go.
“We said in the beginning: ‘Let’s keep the same rate structure; the 90-day, the one-year and multi-entry. The fees were the biggest problem and this gets us back to where we were in the beginning. We don’t want to see the amount increasing by 600 percent but it is what it is.”
The ABM president argued that short-stay boating visitors being hit by cruising permit, anchorage, fishing permit and other fees was too much for many in this category. “We kind of went back to where we started with the increase but, hey, we’ll take it. It’s better than nothing. It’s always better late than never.”
Mr Maury, acknowledging that the reforms had come to late to avoid the negative feedback that the ABM, individual marinas and the Ministry of Tourism had to face at the Palm Beach Boat Show, said: “It was what we had been getting for the last three years. ‘It’s too expensive to come to The Bahamas, it’s not worth it any more. We don’t fish, we don’t anchor out. We’re being charged charged for things we never did’. That’s the majority, and that’s the truth.
“The unfortunate part is that, at the Boat Show, the captains, owners and brokers we talked to said they have moved their base down to the Dominican Republic and some of the other Caribbean islands. It may not be right away we get some of the charter business back but this will help with some of the shorter-term boaters. It’s all important. We don’t want to lose any business.
“We had so many people coming over in the charter business. We’d like to increase that to where we were before. By all accounts, when we talk to different charter and yacht captains, it seems to be 40 percent that we lost with a lot of the boats having gone to the Caribbean and other countries. To try and get that back, that’s the trick.”
Mr Alexiou, meanwhile, hailed the boating reforms as “great news”. He added of the marina, resort and tourism industry: “They are all ecstatic, and all are sending it out all over the world. Overall, it’s very positive. It’s good news. It happened. The inquiry can take place later. The industry has been suffering.
“Right now, in March, April and May, it’s fishing season. It’s a different crowd coming into our marina and they are not affected as much. We did have a slow January and February, we had a slow fall, and know we are losing some June and July business, but now hopefully can save some of that. This is going to be very beneficial.
“I don’t think we will get some of the big groups back. We had some big group cancellations; they’ve committed to the Florida Cays, but other families who have not made commitments, hopefully they will enjoy this. It’s still good news and it will spread fast.”
Robbie Smith, Bimini Big Game Club's veteran dock master of 36 years, told Tribune Business he has yet to study the boating fee changes but praised them as “a good thing”. He added: “It looks like it’s going to help because I have a lot of people calling me from the US. I’m getting a lot of response to the fees being dropped. They’re not talking so much about the anchorage fee or the fishing permit. They are just glad to see that drop from $600-$700 to $300. That will be a big boost. It will be a big one.”
The Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), in a statement, said it had worked alongside the Bahama Out Islands Promotion Board, the Grand Bahama Island Promotion Board, the Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) and the Abaco Chamber of Commerce “to review, clarify, reassess and recalibrate” the boating fees in negotiations with the Government.
Jackson Weech, the BHTA president, said: “We are most pleased with the results of our collaboration and communication with the Government of The Bahamas, which has resulted in important adjustments reflected in the Customs Management (Amendment) Regulation 2026, which goes into effect on April 1, 2026.  

“The new regulations include additional ‘duration of stay’ categories, certain expansions of re-entry time limits and, most importantly, what we believe to be a fair and reasonable fee schedule, which achieves the aims of the Government while ensuring the broadest spectrum of sea-faring visitors continue to be inspired to visit our shores.  
“The BHTA will work with our partners in the public and private sector to disseminate the revised regulations in an expedient, effective manner. Tourism communities, entrepreneurs, service providers, team members, owners and operators of marinas, hotels, restaurants and attractions throughout the archipelago look forward to continuing to welcome our valued, vibrant and diverse boating community, which forms an important segment of our tourism industry in The Bahamas.”