The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

Family Island resorts this year enjoyed a 55 percent increase in visitors driven to their websites by the Ministry of Tourism’s “My Out Islands” site, it was revealed yesterday.

Kristel Garnier, lead account executive for the hotel marketing agency, Tambourine, told the Bahamas Out Islands Promotion Board’s annual general meeting: “We had five percent fewer site visitors this year than we did last year, but this actually resulted in a 55 percent increase in how many ‘goal completes’ we got on the website.

“Yet again ‘goal completes’ are the amount of people that are leaving the ‘my out islands’ website and going to your website, or they are going into your booking mention.”

Ms Garnier said so-called “goal completes” totalled 40,680 in 2019, and their “conversion rate” rose 6.5 percent compared to 2018. She added: “Last year, for the exact same time period, we had only 26,00 ‘goal completes’ so that is a very large chunk, and we also increased our conversion rates for the people who were visiting the website.”

The Family Islands data mirrors what is happening in Nassau. Fred Lounsberry, president of the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotion Board, told Tribune Business last month that The Bahamas was closing the 11 percent booking gap as a result of Dorian with his organisation enjoying a 24 percent rise in website conversions.

He said at the time: “We look at the previous week year-over-year, and the previous four weeks year-on-year, and what we have been seeing is that from the United States we are up eight percent over the same week last year, and the previous four weeks were up 14 percent over last year, bearing in mind last year was a stellar year for tourism.”

Ms Garnier, meanwhile, said Tambourine had expanded its digital operations by adding banner advertisements and images that connect straight to individual hotel websites. This had increased the flow of tourist leads going directly to the hotels.

Focusing on the individuality of different Family Island resorts, she encouraged hoteliers to send pictures of their employees so they can upload it to the website for added marketing value.

Ms Garnier said Tambourine is also pushing new e-mail offers for the Family Islands, featuring a different every month. “The email at the top describes the island and showcases the offer, and we will also have an island ‘bucket list’ of what users really want to do and a map of where to go on the island,” she added, with Bimini and Acklins set to be the pilots.