The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

TRIBUNE Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE BAHAMAS is “missing the boat” in its bid to attract the super yacht market due to uncompetitive tax rates and the absence of a “one-stop shop” entry portal, an outspoken marina chief asserted yesterday, as he warned: “We’re robbing ourselves.”

Peter Maury, the Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) president, told Tribune Business that the Ministry of Tourism’s newly-launched ‘Dock, Anchor and Discover’ campaign is unlikely to “make a vast difference” in boosting The Bahamas’ attraction as a super yacht destination due to the 14 percent charter tax rate and cumbersome, paper-based process for entering this nation.

Estimating that four-fifths of super yachts, boats that are the market’s largest and most expensive, rely on charter income, he asserted that the 14 percent tax rate imposed on such business since the 2022-2023 Budget remains a deterrent since it is much higher than rival Caribbean jurisdictions and others elsewhere.

And, besides taxation, Mr Maury told this newspaper that The Bahamas is “not making it easy” for super yachts, who bring with them the highest-spending boating customers, to enter and clear into this nation because it lacks a single online portal where they apply and pay for the various permits required.

While the Ministry of Tourism used the recent Monaco Boat Show to sell The Bahamas to the super yacht industry, citing the two new cruising permit fee categories introduced earlier this year along with lower fees, the ABM president said the main beneficiaries from these reforms will be the smaller leisure boat sector rather than the market it was pitching to.

He predicted that The Bahamas has more work to do, namely reducing taxation and eliminating bureaucratic red tape, before it can make greater inroads into the super yacht segment. Mr Maury then argued that, by failing to address these obstacles and capitalise on its natural advantages, The Bahamas is “letting people steal our product”.

Pointing to Dubai’s development of Palm Jumeirah, a series of man-made islands featuring Atlantis’s twin resort, he asserted that other nations are feverishly seeking to “emulate” what The Bahamas already has - a series of unique, multi-island destinations. Given that it possesses the “original”, Mr Maury said The Bahamas should be “the centre of hospitality” for the Caribbean, yet it has a conspicuous lack of yacht management and brokerage firms.

The ABM president also warned that attracting more mega yachts and their high-spending guests will, in his view, be critical to Bahamian tourism’s future given how the cruise industry continues to evolve into floating hotels with ever-increasing private island destinations. Cruises, especially the three and four-day variety, now offer multiple experiences at a much lower cost than land-based, stopover vacations, affecting the price competitiveness of Bahamian resorts.

Asserting that “the resort model is done”, and that “nobody is going to build a big hotel again”, Mr Maury argued that The Bahamas faces having to replace its traditional higher-spending stopover visitors. He added that an obvious source is the wealthy boating and super yacht passengers that the current taxation and regulatory regime likely dissuades.

Randy Rolle, the Ministry of Tourism’s parliamentary secretary, touted The Bahamas’ cruising permit categories of 30 days, six months and one year, as well as the elimination of anchorage fees for vessels that dock in marinas, while in Monaco. “We have the infrastructure, the proximity and the unmatched natural beauty to serve as a year-round destination hub, and we have made it simpler for yachts to come and experience all of it,” he said in a statement.

Mr Maury, though, disagreed and said more must be done. “Until we can simplify the charter licence, lower the fee payment and things like that, and which we used to have, I don’t think it’s going to make a vast difference until we get to that point,” he told Tribune Business of the ‘Dock, Anchor and Discover’ campaign. “It’s ease of doing business, ease of getting the licence, and lowering the fees and getting the people here.

“The Bahamas has already addressed the cruising permit fee for private vessels, but in order to get that big boat market, the majority of super yachts are not private,” he added. “They do charters. Until we fix that part of it, we will not see a massive number of super yachts coming over. Eighty percent of those yachts are on charter or do charters.

“That’s the business that brings all the wealthy people to the Family Islands. That has the business of the boats that go all over The Bahamas. They bring the high-end luxury cruise passengers if you will. For a country that does all this business with the cruise ships, you’d think we’d want high-end luxury cruise passengers, but we’re not making that easy. That’s the part I don’t understand. It’s an $85bn industry globally.”

Apart from spreading the wealth to more far-flung and remote Family Island communities, Mr Maury said the boating and yachting industry provides multiple spin-off job and entrepreneurial opportunities for Bahamians, ranging from hull cleaning to vessel brokerage and management. He described the latter as being the “pinnacle” of the industry, featuring multi-million and even billion dollar businesses, but said none were based in The Bahamas.

The ABM president said that, besides making foreign charter fees and taxes more competitive, The Bahamas must also eliminate bureaucracy and manual-based processes if it is to lure a greater share of the super yacht market. “The process of getting a licence has gotten a lot more complicated,” he added. “They separated the fishing licence, the charter licence and the clearance and paying the fee and everything else. That’s part of the problem.”

Again bemoaning the Minstry of Finance’s decision to shut down the SeaZPass online clearance portal created by the industry, and the failure to replace it, Mr Maury continued: “It has to be what we designed in the first place; a one-stop shop where people get their charter licence, pay their fees. Until we get that, we’re missing the boat.”

Competition to attract super yachts is only escalating, Mr Maury said, pointing to the likes of the Dominican Republic and Colombia as Western Hemisphere states that have entered the industry in the last decade and are now rivalling The Bahamas. “Bahamians look at this industry as a Miami to Nassau industry, but it’s not a Miami to Nassau business,” he told Tribune Business.

“Our business comes from the US north-east, from Europe, through the Panama Canal. It’s like all over. These boats move constantly, and so many people don’t understand that once a boat moves” it is hard to attract them back. Mr Maury then warned that The Bahamas was being surpassed by ‘copy cats’ who had adopted its tourism model and geography for their purposes.

“Dubai had to build The Bahamas in the Persian Gulf because it didn’t exist,” he told this newspaper, referring to Palm Jumeirah. “They built all these islands but, if you look at it, it’s The Bahamas. They built all those islands for those resorts and homeowners to compete with what we are. This is our advantage. We have so many islands, and are letting people steal our product. By raising those fees, we are robbing ourselves.

“We have the original Bahamas. Everyone else in the world is trying to emulate it; the Emirates and everybody else. We have to bring the [boating] industry here and build it for Bahamians. They don’t need to go to the Caribbean when we have it all here. We should have management and brokerage companies here, but we don’t even have a cruise office.

“It’s a massive business and it’s a tourism business. We should be the centre of hospitality in this region as far as I’m concerned, and we’re missing the point, missing the boat. If we make some changes we will get more boats to come here, and there will be more opportunities for Bahamians. Young people are looking to get involved with new opportunities with hospitality, and this industry is it.”

Mr Maury said Mr Rolle, in his capacity as the Ministry of Tourism’s parliamentary secretary, understood the “need to get the people here, then worry about how Bahamian companies make money from this”. Pointing to the Mediterranean Shipping Company’s (MSC) further Ocean Cay expansion through its Sandy Cay announcement this week, he argued that cruise tourism is steadily replacing The Bahamas’ higher spending stopover market and the country needs alternatives.

The Central Bank earlier this week reported that sea visitors, including cruise passengers, again drove the expansion in arrivals to The Bahamas for the first seven months of 2026 by increasing 16.4 percent to 7.2m, while air traffic increased by 5.8 percent to 1.2m. This meant cruise passengers accounted for 85.7 percent of all visitors to The Bahamas, although the albeit lower growth in air arrivals suggests stopover, land-based tourism is far from done.

Still, Mr Maury told Tribune Business: “The resort model is done. With these massive cruise ships, nobody is going to build a big hotel again. MSC is building its own island with multiple beaches in the middle of Bahama Bank. How does that benefit anyone else other than people from Bimini who work there…

“Because of that, we will not get longer holidays in the stayovers. Now we will have to look at how to get the boats here to replace what we have lost.”