The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Ministry of Tourism’s director-general said yesterday that its new marketing campaign, coupled with other initiatives, should ease the Bahamas’ reliance on Air Fare credits, while acknowledging that until then “we have to keep the shop open”.

David Johnson defended the promotion as one which had provided significant returns for the $14 million pumped annually into the initiative.

When asked about the future sustainability of the programme, Mr Johnson said: “We don’t know how the market is going to behave. We are committed to making sure we are competitive. We don’t draw lines in the sand and say what we don’t do, because at the end of the day we have to get visitors to the Bahamas and spending money.

“If we find their air fare is high compared to other locations, and this is the only means we have of bring the air fare down so people choose the Bahamas, faced with that or not getting the business, we will do that.

“We believe, though, that when we would have launched our new campaign, revamped our content on our new Bahamas.com site, and put in place in Grand Bahama a five-star, all-inclusive resort that is popular, these things will ease the amount of pressure on us to rebate to the customers. Until we get there we have to keep the shop open.”

Mr Johnson credited the Air Fare initiative with saving numerous jobs in the hotel industry, as well as room rates during the height of the recession.

“In recessionary times we launched that programme, and had we not done that we would have had less money in the Bahamas,” he said.

“We have a monthly review of it, and we are limiting the period to which it applies so that it is sustainable, but to say that this was not value for money and we should just end it, no.

“For the time we were in, it was probably necessary to keep Bahamians working and keeping hotels where they were at, and in a position where they could sustain operations because had they had to drop their room rates to sustain their operations to be competitive, we would have a much bigger problem because all of our costs were high. It was a huge return on investment.”