Speaking with members of the press from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s Barbados headquarters Tuesday, research and information management Director Arley Sobers pointed out that tourist arrivals to the region increased by six percent in 2003.
Statistics on the local tourism sector, however, indicate that The Bahamas was only able to achieve a 3.7 percent growth rate.
Questioned about whether such statistics reveal a trend of The Bahamas continuing to lose market share to emerging destinations, Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe said those numbers alone do not present cause for concern.
“I don’t consider the fact that we are losing market share,” said Minister Wilchcombe. “What we have to appreciate is that there are a number of destinations in the world and there are 700 million tourism-related trips a year and so the fact of the matter is that The Bahamas will always get a share of the pie and others will also.”
He continued, “Our job is to become the number one destination and right now we’re about there, but we have some work to do on our product.”
Key components of that upgrade, Mr. Wilchcombe said, are to improve the country’s overall tourism product and to increase airlift to The Bahamas.
Recounting that more than 4.5 million visitors made The Bahamas their destination of choice last year, Mr. Wilchcombe said he is pleased with the sector’s recent performance, though never satisfied.
“We’re looking very good right now, but you know it’s all depending upon what we do going forward,” he said.
“We are aware of the fact that this is the winter season and we generally do very well during the winter season, but my job is more for what goes beyond the winter season. I’m concerned more about the traditional slow months and trying to get to the point where we have sustainable tourism all year around,” Mr. Wilchcombe added.
Echoing that optimism, Mr. Sobers said that a weak US dollar; safety and security issues; the improving performance of the US, Canadian and European economies and the English cricket tour of the Caribbean are all expected to help boost the region’s performance this year.
Regarding the Bahamian tourism sector, Bahamas Hotel Association President Jeremy MaCvean expressed cautious optimism for 2004.
“The Ministry of Tourism’s promotional advertising campaign [was introduced] around last year Thanksgiving so we’re now getting the name of The Bahamas out again throughout the world,” he said.
He continued, “There had been a lag of about 18 months when the entire Bahamas was not being promoted. There were individual properties like Atlantis that were promoting their own resort, but now we are getting some national promotion out there again and that’s certainly going to have a big impact.”
The BHA president said improved collaboration between the public and private sectors – which he noted was especially apparent during last week’s inaugural National Tourism Conference – should also assist in building the domestic tourism product.
According to Mr. MacVean the long-awaited Festival Place, or welcome centre, could itself play a key role in boosting tourism business.
“There’s been a lot of talk throughout the Caribbean over the last few years about the enemy of the cruise ship industry, but we have now recognised that the cruise ship industry isn’t the enemy,” Mr. MaCvean said.
“We should be using Festival Place for what is known as cruise conversion. Right now one percent of people that visit The Bahamas by cruise would come back at a later stage for a hotel-based stay. If we can increase that one percent to three or five percent, given that last year there were 2.8 million cruise passengers that visited The Bahamas, we’re talking about a lot of people and that would be a major way of building our market share,” he said.
Darrin Culmer, The Bahama Journal
