The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas will enjoy strong tourism growth “on par” with the rest of the Caribbean, an online travel services company is predicting, with searches for this nation up 70 per cent in 2016.

Demetrius Canton, Expedia’s market management director, told Tribune Business: “We’re seeing great growth for the Bahamas this year. It is on par with what we are seeing from the rest of the region.

“From an Expedia standpoint, we spent the last 18 months trying to not only focus on the core Nassau/Paradise Island, but on Grand Bahama and the Out Islands. We have acquired a lot of new products, and that helps the destination because customers are shopping on our sites. They see a broad breadth of products, and it is a great boost to the destination.

“We are seeing really significant growth out of the Out Islands. A lot of it is due to a lot of the new products that we have been acquiring.”

The Expedia group’s platforms reported a 20 per cent increase in year-over-year travel demand for the Caribbean during the 2015 third quarter.

It reported that based on customer shopping behaviour during the 2015 fourth quarter, searches for travel to the Bahamas in 2016 are up over 70 per cent compared to last year.

The top three markets searching for Bahamas travel are the US, up 80 per cent year-over-year; Canada, up 70 per cent year-over-year; and the United Kingdom, up 50 per cent year-over-year.

Looking forward, Expedia said data for 2016 looks promising, with a nearly 70 per cent increase in shoppers for the Caribbean for the 2015 fourth quarter compared to the same period the year before.

“The biggest metric that we look at is room nights and revenue. That is really kind of the key measure of success. Hotels need to fill their rooms, and we help them fill their rooms,” ,” said Mr Canton during an interview at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s (CHTA) Marketplace conference.

“When we talk about growth, we are really talking about room night growth and how that is increasing. Our pace is very strong double digit growth for the year, and it’s across all destinations in the Caribbean

“For the Bahamas in 2016, growth is on par. For 2015, it wasn’t. The destination did lag in 2015, but we are starting to see the fruits of a lot of the initiatives we are doing with our existing partners, and also the new inventory that we brought online is starting to sell now,” Mr Canton added.

“We have Travelocity as a new brand in our portfolio. Last year was the first full year. We saw a tremendous uptick from the Travelocity brand as far as the contribution to the result for the region. We purchased Orbitz, another major online brand. We just migrated Orbitz to the Expedia platform, and there will be further iterations of that in the coming months.”