Tourism forward bookings 15% ahead of 2019 in remaining months

The Bahamas’ stopover business is ahead of 2019 by 15 percent for the remainder of the year, Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation Director General Joy Jibrilu told Guardian Business yesterday, adding that for the first quarter of 2022, the country is down from 2019 numbers by 11 percent so far, according to forward booking numbers.

She explained that travel data company ForwardKeys, which tracks forward-looking bookings for the ministry, logged a 250 percent increase in travel to The Bahamas from the United Kingdom this year.

Jibrilu explained that a meeting with ForwardKeys revealed that The Bahamas is outpacing the Caribbean in terms of its recovery, with all signs pointing to an improving tourism market.

And while 2022 numbers are still below the 2019, pre-pandemic benchmark, Jibrilu said travelers are still employing short booking windows.

She said 2022 numbers could improve for The Bahamas and the region, as time passes, explaining that the Caribbean’s numbers for 2022 are 24 percent off from where they were in 2019.

Jibrilu and the tourism team recently returned from the World Travel Market expo in the UK, where she said the meetings were non-stop.

“Everyone wanted to meet with us,” said Jibrilu. “This is the busiest year The Bahamas has ever had.”

She explained that flights from London’s Heathrow Airport have been paying dividends for The Bahamas, adding that the expectation is those flights will open up this country to the rest of Europe.

According to Jibrilu, her ministry has worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to ensure that the tourism sector quickly regains its pace when COVID-19 restrictions began to subside.

“We are yielding the results now and it’s just really positive for us as a destination,” she said.

“It really is a strategy we employed consistently from the start of the pandemic. We stayed focused. There were a lot of naysayers in the market.

“We never stopped meeting with our partners, never stopped making people aware of where we were with the protocols, whether they were good, bad or ugly.”

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