The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

THE Ministry of Tourism is predicting that stopover visitors through to end-August 2012 will increase between 5-7 per cent year-over-year, although it said yesterday that leisure travellers were some 66,000 down for the first two months of the year when compared to pre-recession levels.

Gary Young, the Ministry's head of research and statistics, told Tribune Business that while the growth rate for the higher-yielding stopover tourists was set to moderate against the 10 per cent achieved for January-March 2012, it was still forecast to be comfortably ahead of 2011 comparatives through the summer.

The rebound was being driven by a combination of leisure travel recovery and business visitor demand, the latter finishing up 18 per cent year-over-year for the January-February 2012 period. Wedding/honeymoon visitors were also up 40 per cent for the same period.

However, Mr Young said that while New York, one of the Bahamas' major US east coast markets, was still continuing to recover towards 2008 levels, Florida remained "a major problem". He attributed this to the rise in that US state's gaming industry and the increasing tendency of consumers to focus on the cheaper cruise alternative.

"It's reasonable to assume a 5-7 per cent stopover increase into August year-to-date," Mr Young told Tribune Business. "We're somewhere in that area right now. That's lower than what we reported so far for January, February, March; that number was around 10 per cent. The base grows, but the increase doesn't.

"A lot of it's recovery in our main market, the US. We've had good growth in Nassau, Exuma, Abaco and Bimini, with most of the increase accounted for by Nassau."

For the January-February 2012 period, the only months for which the Ministry of Tourism has broken down and fully analysed tourist data, Mr Young said Latin American visitors had increased by 78 per cent year-over-year due to Copa Airlines' direct flights from Panama.

That service only began in mid-2011, meaning that the 2012 first half is not up against any strong Latin American comparatives, and Mr Young said it would be interesting to see the growth numbers after a full year of Copa.

US visitors increased by 6 per cent year-over-year for the January-February period, Mr Young told Tribune Business, generating 56 per cent of the overall tourist increase. Latin America produced 18 per cent of the increase for that period, with European visitors between January-February 2012 also increasing 11 per cent.

"A lot of it is the return of the sun, sand and sea European-plan market, staying in hotels," Mr Young added. Of the Bahamas' major markets, New York was "not back to where it was in the past, pre-2008 levels", but was continuing to climb back, while "Florida is still a major problem for us".

"There's a couple of issues with Florida," he said. "The casino market here has a lot of competition with what's going on there over the last couple of years. And I think it's fair to say a lot of the Florida market is attracted to the two-three night cruises that are offering a good bargain these days." High unemployment and a depressed real estate market were also impacting Florida.

Elsewhere, Mr Young said business travel was up 18 per cent for the January-February 2012 period, while wedding/honeymoon visitors were ahead 40 per cent. However, European-plan leisure visitors were off 66,000 compared to 2008 levels for that period.

"It's important that we get business traveller and European-plan back up to get average daily room rates (ADRs) back up," he told Tribune Business. "Business travel can help and offset that [a drop in leisure travel].

"In Nassau, the large hotels generally have been able to maintain good ADRs, but these are below 2008 levels. They're seeing good revenues because room nights sold are up."