The Tribune

By Neil Hartnell

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Ministry of Tourism's top official yesterday said total visitor arrivals to The Bahamas are 30 percent ahead of their pre-COVID record through to end-July although stopover visitors are still trailing slightly.

Latia Duncombe, the ministry's director-general, told the Abaco Business Outlook conference that while year-over-year recovery post-COVID has been "encouraging" the pace of stopover visitor arrivals is still forecast to be slightly down on the 1.27m who came to these shores in the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.

While stopover numbers are projected to finish ahead of 2022, standing at 1.18m for the 2023 full-year as opposed to 902,000 last time, the former figure still remains below the 1.27m that visited in 2019. However, when cruise arrivals are factored in, total visitor numbers for the seven months to end-July stood at 5.8m, representing a 59 percent increase over 2022 and a 30 percent surge over 2019 numbers.

Mrs Duncombe added that Abaco received the second highest number of visitors behind New Providence for the period, with 35 percent arriving via private plane. Total air and sea arrivals for the seven months through to end-July stood at 280,000, some 45.1 percent up on 2022 figures and "within 1.5 percent of 2019 numbers".

Meanwhile, Samantha Lookie, Bahamasair's director of commercial sales and marketing, told the same conference that the national flag carrier enjoyed an 80 percent load factor on its domestic flights to Abaco in July which meant the island surpassed Freeport as its "number one" local destination.

As for international routes, that same month the Marsh Harbour to West Palm Beach service produced a 90 percent paying passenger load factor. "For Bahamasair, anything over 40 percent we consider a good load factor," Ms Lookie said by way of comparison.

"To see 80 percent and 90 percent, you're definitely on your way to a big come back. For August, it was 79 percent for domestic and 86 percent for international, not too bad, and you're on the way. There were 10,663 passengers between Palm Beach and Marsh Harbour, as opposed to 8,889 in 2022. That's a 20 percent increase in 12 months. You've got something right in Abaco because people are coming."