The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I read with amazement in The Tribune that your Tourism Minister is lamenting the fact that Air Canada will not be resuming service to Nassau next month. This route is longstanding having begun in 1947. I have operated a travel agency in the Toronto area for fifty years and have been regularly sending clients to Nassau for all that time. Our family are also of Bahamian ancestry.

It would appear that your Minister and staff did little research of the Canadian market or consultation before imposing very harsh entry requirements when the borders were opened last summer. As a result our bookings to The Bahamas nearly disappeared. We went from Nassau being our prime southern destination to the bottom. We ended up sending even our longtime Bahamas bound clients elsewhere chiefly to Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

We only had a few bookings for Nassau! Working couples did not have the time to wait in long queues at hospitals to get the required COVID-19 PCR test. No private healthcare is allowed in Canada. They would wait two to three days for the results and then be forced to take more time to scan the result and other forms to Nassau for the bureaucratic Health Visa. The return time for permission to travel was uncertain and flights to Nassau reduced from daily to once weekly. Clients had to be there in the ridiculously short five day time span from testing. Clients simply could not be bothered to go through all these hassles so they travelled to destinations with more realistic entry rules.

How could the Tourism Minister ever think people would be willing to go through all those roadblocks? It was unbelievable. Despite many complaints he refused to ease the rules. Now we see the results. The tourism industry in The Bahamas has nearly collapsed. How does he realistically think when flights eventually resume that Air Canada and other airlines can fill the flights to Nassau if all these rules remain? Sadly there is no longer much interest in The Bahamas. I could also not believe that Nassau health care workers are urging the rules be kept even if visitors have both vaccines.

The rollout of vaccines in Canada is slow but steady. It will be a long time before Canadians receive both vaccines. After speaking with other travel agents in this area we believe that unless you drastically ease the restrictions and make it far easier to enter there will be little interest in coming to The Bahamas. So much of this could have been prevented if you had just allowed visitors to bring the test result with them for an extended seven day time period.

Your Tourism Minister and staff have seriously miscalculated the results of their poorly conceived policies and the country is now reaping the whirlwind to the devastating effect on your economy. He can lament all he wants. He must accept blame for the policies of his Ministry. I never thought that this situation could ever arise for the beautiful Bahamas.

GEORGE HITCHCOCK

Toronto, Canada.

April 24, 2021.