By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A South Andros resort developer well-known internationally through his starring role in an HGTV series yesterday stressed the area faces a “real horse and cart and chicken and egg situation” as he warned that land title woes are deterring fresh investment.

Bryan Baeumler, co-owner of Caerula Mar Club Resort, told the Andros Business Outlook conference that south Andros faces the dilemma of needing to attract more visitors and investment but currently lacks the means - via infrastructure, airlift connectivity and activities - to do so.

Asked to identify the most pressing issue in south Andros that must be addressed over the next five years, he replied: ”It’s really tough to boil it down to an only single issue, and as was said it’s not as simple as putting on another flight. It’s not as simple as having more rooms available for tourists. It is about having that widespread strategy where we stop talking and start doing.

“There’s been a lot of talk for years, and we love south Andros, but there’s a lot of challenges - from cost to access to skilled labour to a marina. It’s about making the business and, from an investor standpoint, to make the business sustainable so we can make these changes. We have incredible natural assets but we have got to draw people with facilities and infrastructure that we don’t have.”

Besides detailing his concerns about the current condition of Mangrove Cay airport (see other article on Page 1B), Mr Baeumler also cited “partially paved roads” and his resort’s marina, which he described as being in “a battle zone”.

“There are a lot of land title issues in south Andros,” he added. “That’s a real hindrance, I think, to attracting new investment and new property ownership. I love the concept of bringing some of that responsibility to Andros because, as we know, nobody is coming to help us.

“We have to get ourselves to a certain point, and hold ourselves accountable, because we are in a real horse and cart and chicken and egg situation. We need to bring in more people, but when they come we need things for people to do and more infrastructure. We need more people to pay for it. We’re in these very early stages where we all need to get together in Andros, decide what the end goal is and co-operate to get there.”

Expanding on the land title ownership concerns, Mr Baeumler added that they were “making it difficult for people to come in who want to purchase property or make investments. There’s a lot of challenges in the south that have to be worked through”. He also called for “streamlined” Customs clearance procedures and ease of doing business improvements, pointing to the costs associated with importing goods.

Meanwhile Dr Kenneth Romer, the Government’s director of aviation and deputy director-general for the Ministry of Tourism, conceded at the same conference that The Bahamas is “not doing a good enough job” of assisting local airlines and integrating them with legacy international carriers via inter-line agreements that will facilitate partnerships to move 1.8m annual visitors around the country.

“Never matter how good a job we do talking about our destination, if persons cannot get to see it, all of our marketing dollars are going down the drain,” he warned. “So accessibility and affordability are critical. We have to speak about the development of new routes but, more importantly, sustaining existing routes.

“Sometimes we want to run after the new girl in the pageant when the one who has been loyal all these years, we are not showing them the TLC. We have to fix how we are going to [use] our existing carriers, and it’s not just foreign carriers but our domestic air operators. How are we going to support Le-Air Charters and Flamingo Air. How are we going to grow demand for Western Air?

“Bahamians deserve a seat at the table. When we speak about development, we are not doing a good enough job because the legacy carriers that bring in the 1.8m air arrivals, we want to speak about how we can support our domestic carriers, our local ones, through inter-line partnerships with legacy carriers coming into Nassau.”