Bahamas News

Tourism officials are looking to hire a new agency to create ads for the Bahamas in the wake of its highly touted multi-million dollar Bahamavention ad campaign that received only lukewarm feedback several months ago.

According to Director General of Tourism, Vernice Walkine, the plan is to have new ads in the marketplace by next year.

“We’ll be looking to have a new agency come to us with some fresh ideas on how we can in fact execute that whole theme of escaping from everyday life and The Bahamas being that place,” the Director General said in a recent interview with the Bahama Journal.

Tourism officials launched Bahamavention in New York last December as part of a fully integrated campaign that included television spots, print ads and nearly 600 Bahamavention branded subway cars in that city.

The $12 million campaign targeted overworked individuals who were looking for a vacation intervention.

According to the Ministry of Tourism’s advertising team – Fallon Minneapolis - the idea was to approach the campaign using a three-pronged approach – the multiplicity of experiences in The Bahamas, the Bahamian people as well as the country’s proximity to places like New York.

But the pro-Bahamas campaign took a beating.

Only three months after its launch, a group of senior hotel executives branded the campaign a bust.

In fact, Bahamas Hotel Association (BHA) President Russell Miller minced little words in blasting the ad as a dud.

The campaign was also widely criticized by international media as being “over the top” and “bordering on ridiculous.”

Still, then Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe saw it as a “tremendous success,” stressing that there will always be opposing views.

Ms Walkine recently maintained that the Bahamavention campaign secured the intended outcome – to cause people to think about the solution to their stressed out lives.

“I think it was an idea that was an extension of what we had been doing in the previous couple of years, which was really promoting the idea of The Bahamas as the place to go; to escape from everyday life, so it was a natural extension of that,” she said.

“I think going forward this is a platform that obviously still works for us and still has merit.”

According to the Director General, in a lean year, the Ministry of Tourism has spent $5 million on advertising and in a good year, $12 million.

“There are some investors who actually spend more than we do on pure advertising to the degree that we can get more and more potential investors advertising in The Bahamas or their projects in The Bahamas,” Ms. Walkine said.

“Once the name of the Bahamas gets out then it really complements our efforts very nicely.”

At it stands, The Bahamas does not have an advertising campaign.

But according to Ms. Walkine, tourism officials are “actively” gearing up to roll out a campaign in the United States and Canada in October.