In an interview with The Guardian on Thursday, Jeremy McVean, president of the Bahamas Hotel Association (BHA) expressed pleasure over the new promotional effort given the difficult tourist market The Bahamas has been forced to operate in recently.
“We are very pleased that the new advertising campaign has been announced; its was long awaited…I think it will be very beneficial in the coming year to us. We have been operating in a difficult tourist market in terms of worldwide economies being down. Having a strong advertising campaign opening up is certainly welcome.”
Mr. MacVean revealed that while the bookings for winter is up compared to the third quarter, there are still slow pockets in the winter season based on the current bookings for Comfort Suites “With the exception of January, which is looking dismal, February, March and April for ourselves here at Comfort Suites is looking promising.” He added that December was typically a funny month to predict as the beginning of the month usually sees slower bookings but by the latter part things usually pick up. Mr. MacVean expressed hope that the new add campaign would improve the current outlook.
While both Mr. MacVean and Basil Sands, executive director of the BHA who spoke briefly with The Guardian on Thursday, were unanimous about the benefits and possibilities presented by the new “Island Hopping” campaign unveiled on Wednesday by the Ministry of Tourism, they were also in agreement that equal emphasis should also be placed on the product.
“I think there needs to be an enormous investment and effort in product development and improvement. The environmental maintenance habits we have need improvements, the Cable beach area is desperately in need of attention.” He also added that a little more imagination could be used in developing attractions.
Mr. MacVean noted that the plans currently being discussed between the Nassau Tourism Development Board and the government could have very positive implications for the improvement of the tourist industry. “A lot of the air arrivals that are staying here on Paradise Island often don’t get over the bridge once they come here but the cruise ship arrivals arriving at Prince Georges dock seeing the dilapidated state of down town, those are the people ideally we want to get coming back to The Bahamas in the future in the hotels. We need them to see downtown being clean, exciting and vibrant so they will be like hey we have got to come back here again.”
Mr. MacVean suggested that downtown area adopt the model of maintenance currently used on Paradise Island. “It’s kind of all done privately by our Paradise Island Tourist development association. Over the last four years we rebuilt all the roads and side walks we take care of the infrastructure, landscaping through a levy that’s kind of put on through the hotel member.”
He continued that the private sector could not continuously look to the government for everything. I think the private sector need to come together to be upgrading the lot of the downtown infrastructure. All the business sectors of the tourism industry be it hotels or retail we’re all in this together…we have all got to put our shoulders together to make this tourism engine work properly.”
Given the shrinking global environment that currently exists due to the television and Internet, disturbances (industrial action) like the one that occurred on Atlantis recently could be disseminated really quickly around the world.
“Because Atlantis is the big kid on the block, what happens there people might interpret as happening everywhere in The Bahamas. I hope common sense will prevail in terms of these labour concerns so that we can have a pleasant comfortable working environment to operate in the coming months which along with the advertising would make for a reasonable winter,” Mr. MacVean said.
By Martella Matthews, The Nassau Guardian
