About 12 million Americans travel outside of the United States to attend religious conferences each year, the Tourism Ministry said.
Until now, the Bahamas has not targeted the religious tourism market specifically, although like many Caribbean nations, the island chain has seen tourist arrivals drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Arrivals to Nassau dropped 5-7 percent in the first half of 2002. In part because of the tourism downfall, budget revenues were $60 million short of the government's projections for the first four months of 2002, Prime Minister Perry Christie said last week.
"This is a market that is a natural fit for the Bahamas," said John Washko, executive director of the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, on Wednesday. "Due to the religious nature and religious commitment of the Bahamian people, it seems to me like a match made in heaven."
More than 90 percent of the Bahamas' 300,000 people practice some form of Christianity.
