Bahamas ‘tops’ 5m visitors to end-June

By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE Ministry of Tourism's top official yesterday disclosed that visitor arrivals breached the five million mark for the 2023 half-year although higher-yielding stopovers and air arrivals remained slightly down on 2019's "banner year".

Latia Duncombe, the ministry's director-general, told a Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) board of directors meeting that the surge in arrivals numbers for the six months to end-June had been driven by some 3.9m cruise ship passengers who represent the country's volume business.

"When you look at the performance of The Bahamas, our performance has been robust," she said. "When you look at this year, and year-to-date to June, we've topped the five million visitor arrivals mark, which will be a 66.5 percent increase over 2022 and a 29.6 percent increase over our banner year, which is 2019.

"Foreign air arrivals for year-to-date June were 957,000, which is a 27.5 percent increase over 2022 and it's down slightly, 2.3 percent, over 2019. Our cruise performance remains very strong, 3.9m or 81 percent over 2022 and 42 percent over 2019. Stopovers yearto-date are 974,000, which is up 33.3 percent over 2022 but down 9 percent when we look at 2019 numbers."

The Bahamas is unlikely to "top" the five million mark again during the 2023