The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

SUSTAINABLE tourism has become the “fastest growing” segment of The Bahamas’ most important industry in COVID-19’s aftermath, a leading official says.

Dr Kenneth Romer, the Ministry of Tourism’s deputy director-general and acting director of aviation, said during a tour of the Junkanoo Museum that sustainable tourism is the biggest economic driver for The Bahamas right now with cultural tourism a close second.

“While sustainable tourism does not attract the quantity of visitors, they certainly attract the quality of visitors,” he said, “persons who want to go into some of the off-beaten path destinations, who will spend longer times in the destinations. The visitor spend is going to increase also. Sustainable tourism is an emerging market for us. We’re putting a lot of our support behind sustainable tourism and cultural heritage tourism also.

“The support for cultural and heritage tourism is one of the key priorities for the minister of tourism, investments and aviation, finding ways to create those unique experiences for our visitors but, equally important, finding ways to support local entrepreneurs and stakeholders who are helping us to promote the brand of The Bahamas.

“Certainly, we are looking at ways to explore opportunities coming out of Atlanta, more significantly Savannah, Georgia, and looking at ways to partner through our sister cities, looking at ways for us to increase our brand presence in that market and, overall, just looking at ways to support our local entrepreneurs and stakeholders,” Dr Romer continued.

“Cultural tourism is going to play a huge role in all of that. Coming out of the pandemic, we found that there were increased opportunities for visitors to steal away to some of the smaller, unique experiences, whether they are sustainable tourism models, or whether they also speak to creating, moving away from that mass tourism concept.”

The Tourism Development Corporation will play a significant role in helping cultural tourism to mature into a staple feature of the tourism product offering as “millions” is going towards ensuring this nation is properly branded and marketed.

Dr Romer added: “What we’re doing is we’re taking a very hands-on approach in terms of immersing ourselves in visitor experiences. We do know that this (Junkanoo Museum) is a popular site for visitors. It ranks very high at TripAdvisor. Sometimes we hear about these things, but you want to be very practical in our approach of getting into the fields, seeing for ourselves how we could support at an even greater level, these entrepreneurs and cultural icons and heroes.”