D’Aguilar: Over 400,000 visitors so far this year

Minister of Tourism Dionisio D’Aguilar estimated that more than 400,000 people have visited The Bahamas so far this year. 

“With vaccine distribution in active progress in The Bahamas and throughout key markets abroad, as well as major hotel reopenings, and now the exciting return of cruising in The Bahamas, our country is once again seeing tourism on the rise,” D’Aguilar said on Saturday during the home porting inauguration ceremony of Crystal Cruises. 

“While numbers remain below record arrivals seen in 2019, tourist arrival numbers continue to increase month-over-month, and we estimate that since the start of this year, we have welcomed almost 430,000 visitors to our island nation.

“Just this week, the Nassau Airport Development Company reported that over 55,000 travelers passed through Lynden Pindling International Airport last month.

“Our partners at Atlantis and Baha Mar resorts informed us they have recently enjoyed weekend occupancy rates of 90 percent and 75 percent, respectively.”

Crystal Cruises and the Ministry of Tourism and Aviation held a ceremony on Saturday to celebrate the first sailing of the Crystal Serenity.

The seven-night roundtrip all-inclusive cruise will make calls on Nassau, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, San Salvador, and Long Island.

Crystal Cruise joins Royal Caribbean as both have ships home porting out of New Providence. 

D’Aguilar has said that home porting will bring an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 cruise visitors into The Bahamas in 2021, who will spend approximately $50 million during their week-long stay in the country. 

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in The Bahamas, which started in March 2020, The Bahamas was seeing a year-over-year increase in foreign visitor arrivals.

But the record growth came to an end last year, as the country, like the rest of the world, closed its borders to fend off the novel coronavirus. Airlines, cruise ships and hotels ceased operations for months.

In May, D’Aguilar said the government is projecting “a significant rebound” in its tourism market. 

“I don’t know where the number will lie but as the year goes on, certainly by Christmas and with nothing else impacting that, we should be back to about 60 percent of where we were in 2019,” he said.

“It’s all a bit of a crystal ball now. People are making last-minute decisions now, so it’s hard to predict.”

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