The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Chamber of Commerce's chief executive yesterday urged The Bahamas to exploit the COVID-19 crisis to kick-start domestic tourism after managing to successfully contain the virus to-date.

Jeffrey Beckles said that while "the restarting of our tourism sector is critical", the country "must not lose sight of the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic" with all the risks of a second infection wave that brings.

Describing the planned July 1 tourism reawakening as "a great sign", he added that The Bahamas' ability "to manage our COVID-19 strategy to this level has put us in the best position to consider reopening".

However, Mr Beckles said that with many countries - including the US - still fighting to contain the virus and bring it under control, vacations abroad still appear less attractive for Bahamians. As a result, he argued that this nation will never have a better chance to revive domestic tourism to the Family Islands.

He said "We have an opportunity to fill a huge demand for people that are looking for a place to go, which is fantastic. One of the things that's going to come out of this is our ability to undergird our domestic tourism.

"For a long time we have been wanting to see what we can do to support our domestic tourism, and this is a great platform to do it. We are hoping that all of the stakeholders throughout the islands, Nassau included, will be able to seize the opportunity to rethink and revamp where we need to because, just as demand is growing in foreign jurisdictions to travel to The Bahamas, Bahamians need somewhere to go.

"We have been pent-up in our lockdowns for almost three months now, and Bahamians want to go to Eleuthera. They want to go to Exuma, they want to go to Cat Island and all over. These are great opportunities for us now to not just focus on the foreign tourism, which is important for our foreign reservee build up, but we now have the opportunity to maximise our capacity in domestic tourism and really do some diversification," Mr Beckles added.

"It also spells a good thing, because all of the support services needed to support tourists, hotels and restaurants, and other support services in food and services, we now give them an opportunity to actively get involved again, which means that they are going to be putting people back to work."

Calling on The Bahamas to build upon its COVID-19 containment efforts, Mr Beckles said: "As the world relaxes its travel restrictions, The Bahamas should be the number one destination people would want to go to because it is a clean destination; clean in terms of COVID-19. It is a destination living up to the reputation of being a friendly people.

"We can't afford to let our guard down. Let's work on ensuring that the people that come here over the next few weeks and months have a fantastic experience, and make sure we do our part to maintain our representation of The Bahamas being an extraordinary place to go."