The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Tour operators yesterday revealed Christmas and New Year’s business volumes slumped to just 10-20 percent of pre-COVID levels, adding that this was simply insufficient to sustain a viable enterprise.

Keva Carey, general manager of Bahtours Experiences, told Tribune Business that while happy the “tourism faucet has turned back on”, the drip coming from low tourism arrivals and resort “bubble” restrictions on visitor movements will not allow the company to endure long-term.

She added that the health protocols, requiring visitors venturing off-property to take a COVID-19 test to re-enter the resort, particularly if they take a day trip to another island, is “too expensive” for many tourists to contemplate.

As a result, Ms Carey said Christmas and New Year produced just 10 percent of her regular festive season numbers. She added: “Some hotels have opened in the bubble so that guests are not allowed to do tours. Of course, that would also affect the industry.

"Then, of course, even to pick up from some hotels, we now have the added cost of a COVID-19 test which you may not mind, but the fact that you may only have one guest in there for an entire week and they need another one, it just doesn’t play well.”

Nicholas Pinder, general manager of Born Free Fishing Charters, said he operated at 20 percent of pre-COVID volumes during the Christmas and New Year holidays. He added that “things have dropped off tremendously” once the holidays were over.

Murray Sweeting, operations manager of Tru Bahamian Food Tours, said business was “extremely slow” during the Christmas season but he is “committed” to his staff and keeping them employed.

He added: “We were really hoping that we would have seen more proactive action on behalf of our government to open the borders to allow guests to be welcomed and allow our business to operate.”

Criticising the Government for inconsistencies over its tourism reopening messaging, Mr Sweeting said: “Our whole industry of tourism, when you are analysing recovery, and you have huge entities like hotels and cruise ships, we can't tell them we're opening up in two weeks because they have to on-board their team. They have to expend money to bring their properties back to order.”

Mr Sweeting suggested that a new approach by the Ministry of Tourism may be needed on crisis management and crisis messaging. He said: “What's happened is the Government didn't prepare anybody to open the borders, and entities could not plan. This was it at a high level.

“One of the things that we need to do is that we need a creative team at the Ministry of Tourism, as they need to evaluate if this is the new world they can continue operating in like how they have been.”