Bay Street merchants derive the bulk of their business from cruise ship passengers. According to a Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, cruise passengers spend approximately $74 per passenger or nearly $200 million each year in Nassau and Freeport. Fifty percent of that is spent on watches and jewellery.
A Bay Street merchant said that surveys done by merchants at the outlets in the malls show that the malls and shopping centres control 65 percent of Bahamian retail spending.
The cruise line companies have long recognised the importance of their commodity – their passengers – to the onshore businesses that cater to the cruise passenger. For this privilege merchants have been paying handsomely.
Michelle Paige, spokesperson for the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) told the Journal in a recent interview that the cruise lines hire companies to promote on-shore stores.
Admitting that in their enthusiasm to sell their clients’ stores, she said that sometimes persons promoting the stores “don’t always adhere” to what would be considered a fair representation of onshore shopping.
“It is advertising and it is legitimate,” Ms. Paige said. “But we welcome input from merchants because it is only by working together that we can help each other.”
Ms. Paige said that the cruise lines do take seriously the concerns of the merchants and their partners in the industry but change could not come if concerns were not made known, echoing the position of the Ministry of Tourism’s director general, Vincent Vanderpool Wallace who spoke recently on the subject to the Journal.
“We try to level the playing field,” said Mr. Vanderpool Wallace, Director-General at the Ministry of Tourism, “but the ball’s in their (the merchants) court. The whole matter (the way in which shopping is portrayed by port lecturers) should be addressed by a formal presentation from the merchants.”
The Ministry of Tourism, the Nassau Tourism and Development Board and the Chamber of Commerce are all working to find ways to ensure that non-participating merchants are not perceived as being disadvantaged both by what is said and unsaid by the port lecturers, the persons promoting onshore shopping for the cruise lines.
Nassau Tourism and Development Board’s executive director, Frank Comito, said that the board depended on volunteers. “We need business people to donate their time to getting this initiative organised,” he told the Journal in a recent interview, referring to a programme designed to establish and maintain standards of ‘qualified shopping’.
Mr. Comito said that such a programme is “not easy to pull off”. He said the programme, which would ensure that the participating stores provided and maintained high standards of service with authentic products and competitive prices, would have to meet legal requirements and claims made by merchants, such as guarantees, would have to be reliable.
Merchants who participate do have an “ethics agreement” in which they are bound to respond to and rectify any customer complaint within 30 days, a merchant told the Journal.
“Whatever it is, whether it’s a refund or replacement, we have to take care of the problem within 30 days,” he said.
One merchant decried the negative message that the more enthusiastic port lecturers created when their promotional talk left the impression that the recommended store provided a better shopping experience and guarantee than non-participating stores.
Tim Lightbourn, general manager of the family-owned and operated stores, the Beauty Spot and The Perfume Shop, said the way in which the participating stores were promoted gave the impression that something was wrong with the non-participating stores.
“If a Bahamian cruise line was going into New York and told their passengers that they could only guarantee shopping at Bloomingdale’s, there would be a big uproar,” he said. “So what’s the difference?”
He said that it was no different here. “We do not promote on the ship and I know John Bull doesn’t either, but does that mean that our products or the shopping experience is any less than those who do?” he asked.
And that is the problem that even participants in the programme have. One of the smaller participants claimed that because of alleged arrangements between Parnoff Publishing Inc (PPI Group) and New York-based Diamonds International, a major jewellery company with stores in the US and the Caribbean, his advertising could not state that he sells diamonds.
“They told me that I was selling ‘colourless stones’ instead of diamonds and that I was no longer carrying Tanzanite but ‘purple-coloured African stones'”, one merchant who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Journal in a recent interview.
His claim is supported by a fax that a prospective advertiser received, a copy of which was given to the Journal. The fax states, inter alia: In reference to the Port Lecture Talks and Shopping Program, I was informed that since we are not able to promote diamonds from your store, we are able to promote Brands with Diamonds: For example “Go to (name deleted) and buy C2K Beautiful Diamonds with Emeralds.” We are also able to promote other items in your store.
“We decided not to advertise with them because we carry diamonds and don’t see why we can’t have our diamonds advertised but another competitor can,” one merchant told the Journal. He too spoke only on condition of anonymity.
The Journal contacted, PPI Group to find out why Joe Thomas who sent the fax was “informed that…we are not able to promote diamonds from your store…”
Mr. Thomas, admitting that he “was not sure what “C2K” meant, (“It must be a type of jewellery or brand”) said that he handled the print and that Mitch Pizik, vice president of marketing, would be better able to respond to the question. PPI Group had not responded by press time.
C.E. Huggins, The Bahama Journal
