The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Monthly air arrivals exceeded pre-COVID figures for the first time in January 2023, a senior tourism official said yesterday, while revealing that stranded or in-transit passengers have been unable to find hotel rooms in Nassau.

Dr Kenneth Romer, the Ministry of Tourism’s deputy director-general and acting head of aviation, told the Prime Minister’s Office media briefing that elevated visitor demand meant The Bahamas now has a “capacity” challenge in terms of sufficient hotel room inventory to accommodate all visitors.

“We had a situation the other day where an airline couldn’t find seven rooms for stranded passengers,” he said. “Just Saturday past we had an air transit that made a diversion from Cuba into Nassau, 210 passengers, and we had hoped to overnight them in Nassau but we couldn’t find rooms at any of our properties to overnight passengers coming in. Our challenge right now is capacity.”

Dr Romer said The Bahamas had “soared back” to 7.1m total visitors for the 2022 full-year, a figure just 100,000 shy of the record-breaking 7.2m arrivals welcomed in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that this nation had recovered to about 97 percent of 2019 visitor levels last year.

“Air arrivals are very important because they contribute to heads in beds,” the Ministry of Tourism official said, adding that such stopover visitors typically generate a per capita spending impact that is 28 times’ greater than their cruise counterparts.

Disclosing that 2022’s stopover visitors were around 100,000 below 2019 levels, standing at 1.5m compared to 1.6m, Dr Romer said: “We are about 90 percent recovered at the end of 2022.” This, combined with January’s performance, had given The Bahamas confidence that it can meet the 20 percent year-over-year growth in visitor arrivals for 2023 that is being targeted by Chester Cooper, deputy prime minister and minister of tourism, investments and aviation.

While total visitor numbers for January 2023 were up by 33 percent compared to the same month in 2019, Dr Romer said that month saw air arrivals exceed pre-COVID figures for the first time at around 132,000. This compared to 129,000 for January 2019.

‘“It gives you an idea of what February and March look like,” he disclosed of January’s performance. “Those numbers are holding for February and March.....” He added that the latter two months appear to be on the same growth trajectory as January 2023, providing further confidence that The Bahamas will hit its 20 percent arrivals growth target for the year.

As for his aviation portfolio, Dr Romer said there have been discussions with the Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD), Lynden Pindling International Airport’s (LPIA) operator, about developing a new runway parallel to the existing 1432 in a bid to ease air traffic congestion caused by the increase in private and commercial plans flying in and out of New Providence.

“There have been issues relating to the acquisition of land,” Dr Romer said of the expansion plans. “As airline stakeholders will be aware, that is part of the wider national strategy. LPIA ranks very high on our radar, no pun intended. I can’t commit to a timeline, but I know it’s a priority they have been discussing with NAD, along with the air traffic controllers (BANSA), the Airport Authority and the Office of the Prime Minister.

“There have been active discussions, and that has become a priority again to bring about these incredible improvements to LPIA.” Dr Romer also acknowledged there were land acquisition issues that impact plans to upgrade several Family Island airports that are part of the 14-location bidding process that has recently gone out to tender, particularly at North Eleuthera and Deadman’s Cay in Long Island, plus to “some smaller extent” in Cat Island.

Disclosing that he had been assured by the Prime Minister’s Office that these issues are “being given appropriate attention”, he added that they were unlikely to impact plans to improve The Bahamas’ Family Island airport infrastructure and connectivity.

“We don’t see that as a major impediment to delivering on the timeline for those airports,” Dr Romer said, noting that the North Eleuthera commonage had indicated a willingness to work with the Government to resolve the challenges at that location. “The community wants this to happen and is prepared to partner with us to resolve some of the land acquisition matters.”