The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian destination provider yesterday said it is preparing to receive its first post-COVID cruise ship guests this Thursday after hotel clients kept it afloat over the past several months. 

Peter Rebmann, Pearl Island’s managing partner, told Tribune Business it will finally welcome passengers from Royal Caribbean after 17 months of cruise ship inactivity with no business from that sector at all. 

He said: “To be honest, we didn’t have the cruise ship business so far because we just installed a new reverse osmosis system on our island. So I need first to have fresh water, which I put in place yesterday. So we are hoping that we can welcome the cruise lines on Thursday.

“So we are starting with the cruise ship business, but Royal Caribbean has been here for the past three weeks. I’m not sure about Carnival. We don’t have Carnival Cruise Line in our contract, but Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises are already coming here. So that will be interesting.” 

Having survived with hotel guests since the tourism industry reopened in November, Mr Rebmann said: “Before coronavirus we had three or four cruise lines a day, but now we maybe get three cruise lines a week. So we are still a long way to go in getting back in shape.

“I know the hotels are doing very well. I myself was at Baha Mar and Atlantis, and they were crowded. So I’m happy for the hotels and they certainly are the largest employers outside of the government, so that’s a huge help for me certainly. We have been getting lots of business from the hotels for the last four weeks we have been open, and we have seen tons of online bookings all from hotel guests.” 

Optimistic that business will pick up throughout the remainder of 2021 despite the rise in COVID-19 case numbers, Mr Rebmann said: “It’s not only Royal Caribbean. Don’t forget we have the holiday season in the US and Canada.

“We have many tourists that will be coming in for two or three-week holidays, so it’s not just the thousands of people coming in a day before the Navigator of the Seas is leaving, but that helps on top of it for sure, too, with some coming two days earlier. They are looking for tours in Nassau, so we also got quite a lot of people from the cruise lines which now have Nassau as a home port.” 

Still, Mr Rebmann lamented: “Due to the amount of time we have been closed the salt water has affected all of our equipment, and the costs are still mounting despite having no revenue coming in. 

“So we now have to clean and service our equipment so we can provide quality tours. We have boats and motorcycles that we need to constantly keep running or the salt will eat up everything alive, and when you are not using all of tour technical equipment for 15 months with no business, everything falls apart, so our renovation costs were tremendous.” 

Despite these challenges, Mr Rebmann said he is “glad to be in business” and happy to have “survived”. He added: “With cruise ship guests you need to be 100 percent perfect because it is a different level of business we have with them, but we are ready for this Thursday.”