Bahamas Tourism Minister: Significant Growth Projected in Cruise, Group Business

With cruise ship business projected to continue its “relentless” growth this year and tourism group business expected to grow by 15 percent in the first quarter of this year, Tourism Minister Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace expressed confidence that the country’s number one industry is on a good footing.

“We think that we are going to have a robust first quarter,” Vanderpool-Wallace said as he addressed attendees at the Bahamas Business Outlook Conference yesterday morning at the Wyndham Nassau Resort and Crystal Palace Casino.

“A large part of the reason we think we are going to have a robust first quarter is that something is coming back, which is group business. Our group business in the first quarter of this year is going to be up by 15 percent, and so we are going to find ourselves in a much better situation in the first quarter than we’ve seen for some period of time. And our cruise business is going to continue its relentless growth in 2012,” Vanderpool-Wallace said.

The minister added that with the expected growth in cruise business, the country “is going to be bigger than even Cozumel, Mexico which is dominant in the Caribbean in cruise business.”

“We are going to find ourselves in a situation where several months in 2012 will be better than the corresponding months in 2008, which is a most important benchmark because very clearly we are going to be moving ourselves out of the recession that we have been in for some period of time.”

Preliminary statistics on the Ministry of Tourism’s website show that there were just over 5.05 million cruise ship passengers last year –which is an increase over 2010, which ended with 4.67 million cruise arrivals. As it relates to air arrivals, Vanderpool-Wallace said the country has to continue to find ways to lower the cost to get to The Bahamas.

“Everybody –man, woman and child- has an impact on tourism,” he said, adding that Bahamians should make a special effort to ensure that visitors enjoy their Bahamian experience. “It may be very hard, but you have to do it,” he said.