Family Islands will likely benefit most from first wave of tourists, notes Jibrilu

With tourism set to fully reopen in two weeks, Director General of Tourism Joy Jibrilu said it will likely be the Family Islands that will see the majority of the first wave of visitors.

Jibrilu said those travelers are likely to be ones that are already familiar with The Bahamas as a vacation destination, particularly since there is currently no marketing out by the Ministry of Tourism to attract other demographics.

“We have seen the Family Islands will definitely and always do well; people wanting to come back to their second homes, et cetera. We can already start to see bookings in terms of airline reservations, we can see traffic to the website. We don’t have specific numbers because many of the hotels have not announced their exact dates for opening. But as soon as a hotel announces it you can see the increase in traffic to the website,” she told Guardian Business yesterday.

“But I need to caution too that we’ve not actually marketed fully. While we have communicated to our partners and we’ve communicated obviously internally, the Ministry of Tourism has not gone out and done any marketing yet. And the reason is, I’ve said this before, we are coming up to a US presidential election. We feel that people won’t have an appetite until after that. And so we’ve been preserving our marketing funds so that we can have a more meaningful marketing campaign leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas, when all of us are in the best place to know where we are. It allows us too to open up and do it slowly and do it well.”

Speaking to a recent assertion made by former Minister of Health Dr. Duane Sands that he is skeptical the country is prepared for the reopening of tourism while COVID-19 cases continue to trend upward, Jibrilu maintained that The Bahamas is not in a unique position, as most tourist destinations around the world – including the United States and parts of Europe – are grappling with containing COVID-19 numbers.

“We’re watching it, we’re watching it closely. Obviously, we desperately would have wanted to see the situation reverse or going in the other direction and we hope that this period of weekend lockdowns would cause that to begin to happen. We have not had any feedback from our partners as yet on the numbers in The Bahamas, but I can’t say today what impact that would have,” she said.

“I think just as you would and I would we’re going to look at wherever we travel and say if this is the time we want to go. But certainly by Thanksgiving and by Christmas, which is what we’re all leaning towards, we’ll be in a different position.”

The Ministry of Tourism has set November 1 for the full reopening of the tourism industry, although most major hotels have not given definitive reopening dates.

Asked about a recent leak of minutes from an executive meeting at Atlantis Paradise Island, which revealed the property is considering reopening before the end of the year, Jibrilu said the Ministry of Tourism is in constant conversation with Atlantis and Baha Mar to get a sense of understanding of procedures and processes for reopening.

“They have intimated that this is what they are seeking but they have not given a confirmation,” she said.

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