By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
The Bahamas has the greatest airlift per available hotel rooms in the Caribbean, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper has found, although flights to this nation from the US have fallen “by almost 50 per cent” since 2000.
The paper, entitled ‘Flying to Paradise’, discloses that the Bahamas was the third leading Caribbean destination in 2014 in terms of attracting outbound commercial flights.
The report, which aims to assess the impact and role played by airlift in Caribbean tourism, said the Bahamas received 20,920 US commercial aviation flights that year, running behind only the Dominican Republic with 25,684, and Cancun at 25,360.
The authors, Sebastian Acevedo, Lu Han, Hye Sun Kim, and Nicole Laframboise, found that these flights translated into 1.286 million US passengers coming to the Bahamas, placing this nation fourth in the region behind Cancun, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
The Bahamas was served by the highest number of airlines out of all Caribbean destinations in 2014, 18, which departed from the same number of US cities - placing it third in the region.
However, due to its proximity to the US and flight frequency, the Bahamas was served by a relatively smaller average plane size with 86 seats. Load factors were also among the lowest for the region, at an average 67.5 per cent.
More concerning, given that US visitors make up between 75-80 per cent of all tourists visiting the Bahamas, is the IMF working paper’s assertion that the number of flights to this nation has dropped significantly since mid-2000.
“The number of flights departing from the US to the Caribbean has picked up somewhat since the financial crisis, although they have grown slower compared to US flights to the rest of the world,” the paper’s author said.
“While the number of flights to the Caribbean increased by 8 per cent, US flights to the rest of world grew by 22 per cent. Flights to Cancun, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, which combined account for almost half of total flights to the Caribbean in our sample, have been increasing faster than those to other tourism-based countries.
“In contrast, flights to Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas,and Barbados declined by almost 50 per cent since mid-2000. In 2014, Cancun and the Dominican Republic received the most number of flights, over 2,000 per month on average.”
The paper, though, provides no evidence to support the claim that the number of US commercial outbound flights to the Bahamas has dropped by that amount over the past 15-16 years.
Suggesting that the Bahamas has a reasonably competitive commercial airlift market, the IMF working paper said this nation’s archipelagic nature meant it had the lowest density of hotel rooms in the Caribbean.
As a result, while this nation led the region for airlift per available hotel room, it was ranked near the bottom when it came to airlift supply factors per square kilometre.
“The link between airlift and room capacity is important as the availability of one determines the availability of the other,” the IMF paper said.
“Notably, the biggest differences between the two rankings are for the Bahamas and Grenada. The latter goes from being among the top in airlift per square kilometre to the bottom in airlift per hotel room, while the opposite is true for the Bahamas.
“This is related to the density of hotel rooms, with the Bahamas having the lowest hotel density in the region at one hotel room per square kilometre, and Grenada having the highest at close to 50 rooms per square kilometre.”
The report added that all major Caribbean tourism destinations, the Bahamas as well as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, “ranked near the bottom” when airlift was measured against geographical areas.
Increasing the number of outbound US flights was found to be “the most effective way to increase” tourist arrivals, with a 1 per cent rise in frequency generating an immediate 0.3 per cent increase in visitors.
“With the exception of three countries, the Caribbean would benefit more from increasing the frequency of flights than from increasing any other airlift supply factor,” the report’s authors said, including the Bahamas with the majority.
“These findings suggest that tourism authorities across the Caribbean should focus their efforts on improving airlift by seeking to increase the number of flights. While all the other factors show a positive impact on tourism flows, it is the number of flights that is more likely to result in more tourists coming to their shores.
“This does not suggest limiting destinations to only one airline with frequent flights. Variety and diversification are also important, and our results support that.”
The working paper’s authors, though, said that given the extensive subsidies that Caribbean nations often used to attract - and retain - airlines, they would be “better off” trying to encourage existing carriers to add more flights, rather than negotiate with a new airline.
“In countries with more frequent severe [natural] disasters, such as Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Grenada and St Kitts and Nevis, there is a large decrease in tourists ex-post,” the IMF working paper added.
“The immediate drop in visitors ranges from 30 to 50 per cent, and on average the total decline in arrivals over one year exceeds 90 per cent after a large disaster.”
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