Bahamas News

As the new Chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is expected to shift the focus of the Caribbean Community’s agenda over the next six months from economic integration to tourism.

While world tourism grew by seven percent last year, tourism in the Caribbean grew by only one percent, a figure Prime Minister Ingraham is hoping to help turn around.

“One of the things that we do not appreciate in the region is the extent to which we are not top of the world’s list in terms of travel anymore,” Mr. Ingraham said during a recent interview with the Bahama Journal.

“We have got to find a means by which we can increase our growth rate. We have become very expensive. We have not ensured that our infrastructure is up to acceptable standards in many respects and we in the region have got to find the means by which we can collaborate more than we are [doing] today.”

The data is still being collated but there are apparently doubts that The Bahamas reached the five million visitor mark in 2007, a feat that was achieved for the first time in 2004.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Tourism show that up to October 2007 just under four million visitors had chosen The Bahamas as a vacation destination, which was 3.8 percent less than the total tourists who visited these shores between January and October 2006.

The figures also showed that 2.3 million of those visitors who came to The Bahamas between January and October last year arrived in New Providence, while the other 540,000 were recorded for Grand Bahama and another one million traveled to the Family Islands.

Data also shows that in the month of October alone, there were over 298,000 tourist arrivals.

Tourism Minister Neko Grant has blamed a softening US economy – in part – for the less than stellar performance in tourist arrivals last year, a sentiment Tourism Director General Vernice Walkine echoed during a press conference announcing this year’s National Tourism Week, which kicked off this past Sunday.

“This year, there is even more urgency and importance placed on the conference. This is a time in which we see the United States, our largest and most lucrative tourism market, taking measures to fight off a possible recession,” Ms. Walkine said.

“The US dollar is weakening, consumerism is low and many middle-income families find themselves in a mortgage crunch…We must come together to discuss these things. There is nothing more important to our country and we should tackle these issues together.”

Ratings and services group Standard and Poors’ (S&P) revised report has pointed to some degree of concern for the pace of investments and tourism in The Bahamas.

In fact, the report noted the continuously below-par performance of the tourism sector.

Officials noted “the sector, which represents about 60 percent of The Bahamas’ GDP is expected to be negatively affected by the curbed demand from US consumers.

An estimated 85 percent of the tourists who come to The Bahamas are from the United States.

While bringing the keynote address at Caribbean Marketplace 2008, Prime Minister Ingraham recently called for creativity and imagination, which he said are critical for land-based tourism operators in the region.

“Of the total growth in Caribbean tourism over the last year or more, 60 percent of the growth was accounted for by Cuba and Santo Domingo,” Mr. Ingraham told the Journal.

“…So we are not doing as well as we ought to and we are going to have a major focus on doing better. The extent to which we have been able to attract high income persons has helped to compensate for a number of deficiencies.”

Tourism is not the only issue Prime Minister Ingraham is expected to focus on during his tenure as CARICOM chairman.

Mr. Ingraham is expected to continue CARICOM’s focus on functional cooperation – that is the extent to which the region can work together to improve education, healthcare, environmental standards as well as disaster management.

Source: Bahama Journal