Recent celebration of the success of our tourism effort have had a hollow ring for businesses on New Providence. Bay Street, once a mecca for Bahamian-owned tourism businesses offering European fabrics, Bahamian ceramics, high end photography equipment and a cornucopia of Bahamian food and entertainment, now offers a few souvenir   and jewelry stores, open only until sunset. No restaurants or bars. No museums or galleries. Only a straw market left. While the cruise lines and the large resorts may be boasting about their best year ever, few, if any, tourism-related businesses on New Providence is even boasting of a good year.

Clearly the connection between the success of our foreign direct investment friends and the economic vitality on the island is not what we think it is, or we would all be celebrating.

The recent speech by the Executive Director of the Tourism Development Corporation, as reported in the Tribune on September 28, 2023, helps to explain the conundrum. The Government apparently has a different view of the relationship between tourism and the economy than the rest of us. Whereas most of us consider that relationship a marriage, the Ministry of Tourism apparently considers it at least an arm’s length relationship. Speaking for the Ministry, the Executive Director of the TDC declared:

“By managed well, what we mean is that there is that natural, organic, trickling down effect, and that everyone in the country experiences or feels the benefit…”

“Trickling down” assumes someone else is expected to be getting the primary benefit of our effort and that we only benefit if they do well.

Further discounting the importance of local economic participation in the tourism business, he attempted to deal with what he called “gaps” in our tourism product offering, described by him as a few “tours and excursions”:

“Our visitors have been telling us for some time, lamenting the fact (that) there is so little to do, and while we know that’s really not the case, some of it just needs a little bit of structure. It needs a little PR….”

He downplays the fact that our customers are telling us we’re the second worst stop in the Caribbean (we’ve been hearing it now for three administrations, at least) and he says they are wrong. He first acknowledges their dis-satisfaction, then dismisses it as “not the case”. All we have to do, he says, is give structure to a few “tours and excursions” and organize a little PR. No mention is made of the dire need for any other money-making local tourism experiences (retail, event or published attractions). All we need are “tours and attractions”. Apparently it is not necessary for us to make money for us to celebrate a banner year.

These comments simply confirm Government’s commitment to a “trickle-down” benefit from tourism, one in which the primary benefits go to those we invite to operate their tourism businesses in the Bahamas (foreign direct investors in cruise ships and large resorts). The intended trickle-down benefit is a job.

So, what is the alternative?

The alternative is to once again become a true tourist destination, to become the owner of the tourism business in the Bahamas. It is to commit to crafting a business that benefits the Bahamas first, and our friends afterwards. It is to understand the principle that operating a successful business requires one to have their own customers, to have product to sell and to make a profit. That is the only sustainable alternative, because at present the Bahamas has none of the above.

We gave up the search for customers of our own almost five decades ago. In our current trickle-down economy, we rely on our foreign investors to have the customers (and we help them pay to get them). But the cruise passengers and the resort guests are not our customers, and the paltry returns we sometimes complain about demonstrate that. The hotels not associated with a resort (part of the infrastructure requirement in a tourist destination) all folded over 40 years ago and all the on-island attractions died, both for lack of customers. So, if we wish to once again operate a tourism business, we would again have to address customer-getting strategies specifically for the destination.

We would take a different attitude towards product. The only sustainable product in the tourism business is the story of the destination, as told by its place, history, belief systems and lifestyle. And the only way to sell that story is in businesses that package the story called attractions. Attractions are the fuel for a tourism economy. That is where the money is made. The success of a tourist destination depends 100% on its stock of attractions. We would have to stop making it impossible for Bahamians to create attractions and welcome them (and encourage them) as part of our own wealth-building system. This is where the real economic benefit from tourism is. For the past four decades we have allowed the product on our shelves to rot and die, while offering healthy support to others.

Finally, we would have to choose better mentors.  Our business is global, and the business model for the business of tourism is expressed globally. We see it in play when we travel. It is time to look globally for inspiration.

According to the Executive Director, the TDC is the arm of the Government responsible for encouraging “global competitiveness”. The TDC has existed for at least 4 years, but our visitors are still telling us “there is so little to do”  (that is, we are un-competitive) and it’s getting worse. Assuming there is a will to change, only one of two factors would explain that lack of improvement. Either the TDC has not been doing what it was created to do or what it was created to do does not in fact address the problem. We believe it is the latter.