The $1.4 million grant approved by the Inter-American Development Bank last year to assist The Bahamas Hotel Association in creating a lucrative eco-sensitive resort market for tourists, is only a signature away from being signed over to BHA officials, according Frank Comito, the association’s executive vice president.
The multi-lateral investment fund will be used to encourage small to mid-size tourism enterprises which focus on eco-tourism, nature tourism, cultural and heritage tourism.
“We are waiting for the final signing of the contract with the representatives from the IDB programme, which is anticipated sometime this month,” Mr. Comito said.
“In the meantime we have been building our team of staff expertise on the programme and should have that finalized within the next week or so.’
He added, “We will also be going through some training, perhaps at the end of this month or the end of March, in strategic planning and we should be rolling the programme out fairly soon.”
Mr. Comito said there are very few eco-tourist resorts in The Bahamas.
“There is only a handful of them, but what we are trying to do in the project is not make every resort an eco-tourist resort, but make as many of our resort marinas, tourism type of attractions and excursions, to make them eco-sensitive,” he said.
He explained that BHA also wants to capitalize on The Bahamas’ historical and cultural heritage value, which will begin with events, landmarks and other locally important sites.
“We have to create some standards in all of those areas and the project will help us do that,” he said.
“[It will] improve the present standards, build quality types of standards within these types of resort offerings and then begin to market them in a market that is very attractive to those kinds of guests.”
The grant from the Inter-American Development Bank is not the only funding that will sustain this venture, Mr. Comito said.
“The Bahamas Hotel Association, in corporation with our partners, The Ministry of Tourism and the Antiquities Monuments and Museum Corporation with support from the Caribbean Alliance of sustainable tourism will also be providing some matching money when necessary to make the project work.”
By: Royanne Forbes, The Bahama Journal
