The Tribune

• Monthly increase ‘a big difference’

• Post-COVID weddings see tail-off

• Marina off 10% but up versus 2019

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A HARBOUR Island hotelier yesterday revealed a “night and day” comparison to pre-COVID performance as revenues for May 2023 were some $100,000 up on the same month in 2019.

Benjamin Simmons, proprietor of The Other Side and Ocean View properties on Harbour Island and Eleuthera, told Tribune Business this was “a big difference” for small, boutique properties such as his with tourism maintaining its post-pandemic rebound into the summer months for the popular visitor destination.

“It seems like in 2019 that we didn’t know what business was,” he said. “It’s night and day. It’s a bit different because we’ve added rooms to the property and on the pricing, but it’s basically a $100,000 difference in revenue for that one month - May 2023 versus May 2019. Occupancy was basically the same, but that’s a huge difference on the actual revenue. That’s a big difference.”

Mr Simmons told this newspaper that revenues for his two properties were ahead of last year’s June performance, while occupancy was “comparable”. He added: “Between the two properties it was 61 percent versus 58 percent last year, so it was pretty much the same story,

“May was similar. It was slightly down at 67 percent occupancy versus 75 percent last year, but revenue was about $4,000 higher. Revenue increased but there was a slight dip in occupancy. It seems like we’re holding steady, all things considered. Christmas and December, those periods we start selling in June, and we’re already sold out. Fingers crossed, it’s business as usual and we’re holding steady.

“I think we’ve had a bit of a turn down in the wedding story. That post-COVID inflated demand has trailed off a bit, but we’ve had back to back great tears since 2021. The only thing we saw a drop in volume for was wedding bookings going into next year, and we expected that to a certain degree,” Mr Simmons continued.

“It’s definitely a bit lower, mostly because I think COVID did create that artificial over-demand where people could not get married for two years and that created a backlog for wedding dates.”

Joseph Dargavage, managing partner at Harbour Island’s Romora Bay Resort & Marina, told Tribune Business that his property exceeded the “real target” of 2019 pre- COVID numbers for June although it was some 10 percent down on 2022’s peak performance.

“We’re doing well. We just closed out the month of June, and we didn’t quite beat 2022 numbers but we weren’t far off,” he said. “We were happy with that because 2022 was just so huge. For the July 4 weekend we’re off by 10 percent, but it’s still pretty good because if you compare it to 2019 figures we’re actually doing better.

“For Eleuthera and Harbour Island, we’re feeling very positive. We consider the month of July the last big month of summer, and I can tell you all three marinas here did finish well in the month of June; maybe a bit off from last year but very close and above 2019 numbers, which is really our target.” Besides Romora Bay, the other marinas he is referring to are the Briland Club and Valentine’s.

Harbour Island’s performance comes on the back of visitor arrivals to The Bahamas hitting 4.2m for the first five months of 2023, the deputy prime minister has disclosed, representing a one million increase compared to the same period in 2019.

Chester Cooper, also minister of tourism, investments and aviation, unveiled to the annual Department of Aviation Symposium statistics that showed The Bahamas is more than half-way to his eight million arrivals target for the full year with more than seven months still remaining.

“Noting the natural synergy that must exist between tourism and aviation… I must take a brief moment to highlight our tourism performance over this fiscal year,” he said. “I’ve just received the most recent statistical review for the period ending May 2023. I’m pleased to report that our performance continues to shatter pre-pandemic levels, and further positions The Bahamas amongst the regional and global leaders in terms of our overall tourism recovery.

“May should now be dubbed as the million milestone month. May is typically a slow month, but May had overall visitor arrival numbers of one million - ahead of the same period in 2019, which was our best year ever. To put it another way, we welcomed 4.2m visitors at the end of May 2023 compared to 3.2m visitors at the end of May 2019.”

Michael Halkitis, minister of economic affairs, last week told the Senate during the 2023-2024 Budget debate that average hotel occupancies for the nine-month period to end-March 2023 stood at 65 percent, which represented a 10 percentage point rise over the prior year’s 55 percent.

AirDNA, which provides vacation rental industry data on Airbnb-listed properties, said the average occupancy rate for entire place listings jumped to 69.8 percent from 61 percent over the same nine-month period.