The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Ministry of Tourism's top official yesterday disclosed that visitor arrivals breached the five million mark for the 2023 half-year although higher-yielding stopovers and air arrivals remained slightly down on 2019's "banner year".

Latia Duncombe, the ministry's director-general, told a Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) board of directors meeting that the surge in arrivals numbers for the six months to end-June had been driven by some 3.9m cruise ship passengers who represent the country's volume business.

"When you look at the performance of The Bahamas, our performance has been robust," she said. "When you look at this year, and year-to-date to June, we've topped the five million visitor arrivals mark, which will be a 66.5 percent increase over 2022 and a 29.6 percent increase over our banner year, which is 2019.

"Foreign air arrivals for year-to-date June were 957,000, which is a 27.5 percent increase over 2022 and it's down slightly, 2.3 percent, over 2019. Our cruise performance remains very strong, 3.9m or 81 percent over 2022 and 42 percent over 2019. Stopovers year-to-date are 974,000, which is up 33.3 percent over 2022 but down 9 percent when we look at 2019 numbers."

The Bahamas is unlikely to "top" the five million mark again during the 2023 second half as this contains the traditionally slower parts of the tourism season, whereas the figures to June included the peak winter season.

Joy Jibrilu, the Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board's chief executive, told the same meeting that when it came to airlift "based on currently loaded schedules we will just exceed our 2019 seat capacity in October this year, which will be up 3 percent over 2019.

"Currently loaded seat capacity for December 2023 is 16 percent higher than December 2019, and December 2019 was the highest seat capacity December month in the last 20 years," she added. "Overall airlift capacity in the second quarter was up this year by 15 percent this year compared to last year."

Vernice Walkine, Nassau Airport Development Company's (NAD) president and chief executive, said passenger traffic at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) had recovered to 94 percent of pre-COVID levels by end-June 2023 and was tracking some 18 percent ahead of last year's figures.