Bahamian Prime Minister Concerned about Tourism Growth Rate
As the new Chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is expected to shift the focus of the Caribbean Community’s agenda over the next six months from economic integration to tourism.
As the new Chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham is expected to shift the focus of the Caribbean Community’s agenda over the next six months from economic integration to tourism.
While world tourism grew by seven percent last year, tourism in the Caribbean grew by only one percent, a figure Prime Minister Ingraham is hoping to help turn around.
“One of the things that we do not appreciate in the region is the extent to which we are not top of the world’s list in terms of travel anymore,” Mr. Ingraham said during a recent interview with the Bahama Journal.
“We have got to find a means by which we can increase our growth rate. We have become very expensive. We have not ensured that our infrastructure is up to acceptable standards in many respects and we in the region have got to find the means by which we can collaborate more than we are [doing] today.”
The data is still being collated but there are apparently doubts that The Bahamas reached the five million visitor mark in 2007, a feat that was achieved for the first time in 2004.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Tourism show that up to October 2007 just under four million visitors had chosen The Bahamas as a vacation destination, which was 3.8 percent less than the total tourists who visited these shores between January and October 2006.
The figures also showed that 2.3 million of those visitors who came to The Bahamas between January and October last year arrived in New Providence, while the other 540,000 were recorded for Grand Bahama and another one million traveled to the Family Islands.
