Admitting to the confusion caused by recent travel restriction announcements, Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar said yesterday that it would be very, very difficult to sell leisure travel to The Bahamas with the newest 14-day quarantine requirement for persons entering the country.
Tourism stakeholders have been scrambling to get ahead of the messaging internationally that the country had closed its borders to travelers from United States, after the prime minister announced initially that air carriers from the US bringing passengers would not be permitted to enter the country, only to change the directive a few days later.
“You’re absolutely right. There was a certain element of confusion last week with the sudden changes in our orders. As you would know we closed the country to US flights and then we opened the country to all flights. And then we imposed a 14-day quarantine and then we had the lockdown,” D’Aguilar told reporters outside the Churchill Building yesterday before the weekly Cabinet meeting.
“So obviously the government was reacting to the changing state of affairs as it relates to COVID-19 on the ground. So we’re in the midst of surge number two. We fixed surge number one and the government is trying to address surge number two. There is no doubt that by imposing the 14-day quarantine, that has had a significant impact on foreign visitors coming into the country.”
The Bahamas has seen a surge of more than 200 cases of COVID-19 since the country reopened its borders fully at the beginning of July, prompting the competent authority to reinstate new emergency orders and partial lockdown measures.
The newest emergency orders issued approve hotels as appropriate quarantine facilities. D’Aguilar said this measure was taken to give some life to tourism during this time.
“So, the 14-day quarantine makes leisure tourism very, very difficult to sell, but obviously it’s a critical component of preventing surge number three. So we’re trying to work out situations where we can prevent a surge and allow some semblance of tourism to happen,” he said.
“And the 14-day quarantine makes it very, very difficult for you to have leisure tourism and as our entire economy or most of our economy is dependent on tourism, we’re trying to work through how you can operate a tourism sector in this pandemic.”
What’s most important, D’Aguilar said, is that Bahamians and visitors understand the importance of staying in quarantine to stem the spread of COVID-19 and that The Bahamas is not alone in implementing this new requirement.
“So we really have to fix the quarantining and make sure that people understand the importance of that and there is sufficient enforcement. But many, many countries are imposing a 14-day quarantine. Canada has a 14-day quarantine, the United Kingdom, certain parts of continental Europe, New Zealand,” he said.
“And the reason why they are imposing this 14-day quarantine is because that’s how long you have to be locked up in order for us to determine whether you’re positive or not. You can get infected on Monday, test on Tuesday and test negative. You have to wait the 14 days to know for sure if you’re positive or not. So that is now resonating and that is why it’s so important to quarantine.”
D’Aguilar said because of the often sudden nature of such sweeping changes, the government is also working on doing a better job at providing information about possible lockdowns in advance.
The post D’Aguilar: Very hard to sell tourism with 14-day quarantine appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/2020/07/29/daguilar-very-hard-to-sell-tourism-with-14-day-quarantine/
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