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A Tourist Destination is not a place, it is a business. It is operated by the people of the place, but it only works if they commit to the fundamentals of a business. It is a business that makes the bulk of its money from DIRECT TOURIST SPENDING. Its primary products are the story of the destination – usually the story of its people – and the hosting of its customers. The story of the destination is told through attractions that package the destination’s history, place, belief systems and unique lifestyle. The more attractions, the more satisfying the tourist shopping and spending and the more sustainable the business. The hosting of customers allows the sale of accommodations, transportation and a network of hospitality elements. Therefore, a successful Tourist Destination has a sustained inflow of customers who buy accommodations, pay to move around the destination and eat drink and make merry while enjoying a healthy inventory of attractions.
Here is an example of the way it works.
Miami/Ft. Lauderdale is a successful Tourist Destination. They have ensured a constant flow of customers by investing in things that create events (mostly sporting and cultural) and developing a branding to support those elements. A Bahamian going to Fort Lauderdale for a Miami Dolphin’s football game (and some shopping) might have the following experience.
On landing he would either take a taxi or rent a car to get to his hotel. Both the rental car company and the taxi company are locally owned. The hotel he is likely to check into would be selling accommodations primarily. not likely a resort (we will say why later). Again, the hotel is likely to be locally owned, although operating a franchise, like Comfort Suites. For breakfast, he would most likely go to Denny’s, Wendy’s or some other locally owned franchise operator. For lunch he might stop at the food court in the mall or a mall restaurant. For dinner it might be Olive Garden or Red Lobster, also locally owned. After the game and dinner, he might head to a local nightclub before returning to his room. Every expenditure would have been to an establishment owned locally. All of his (direct tourist) spending would have gone into the local economy to spur its growth.
Compare that with a Floridian’s trip to Nassau.
Yes, the taxi company and the rental car company are locally owned, but the accommodations he is taken to is more likely to be at a resort. A resort, by definition, is an attraction with accommodations. Their customers expect to be taken care of while they enjoy the attraction that prompted their choice. So whether it is Baha Mar, Sandals, Breezes or Atlantis, the visitor from Florida expects to have his hosting needs completely met on property. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, followed by in-house entertainment. With the possible exception of an island tour, the Tourist Destination can expehile the resort and cruise ship operators repatriate their profits, the local economy celebrates only the jobs produced.
This does not mean that resorts are to be discouraged. They serve two very important purposes in the tourism economy. They are a healthy source of employment and they polish the brand of the destination. But in the marketplace they compete for customers with the Tourist Destination, a competition that is healthy if the Tourist Destination is operating its business properly.
Let us return to the success of the Tourist Destination. It relies on two things: a customer-getting strategy and an inventory of attractions. A customer-getting (marketing) strategy is a long-term commitment, the most important responsibility of the destination’s managers. It must result in a sustained inflow of customers over an extended period, and requires a branding commitment. The defunct Tourist Destination called Nassau has not had one for almost half a century. And rather than build an inventory of attractions, successive administrations have actively discouraged the creation of attractions, hoping to prove that attractions are not as important as resorts. The result is a highly successful resort sector and a defunct Tourist Destination. And attempts to suggest that all is well when even the blind sees otherwise. There are few hotels in the destination because there is no customer-getting strategy and they could not survive without an inflow of customers. Without customers being hosted in the Tourist Destination, its product has withered and died. No product, no accommodations, no transportation, little hospitality. Is there any wonder the Tourist Destination is destitute while the resorts and cruise ships celebrate their best year ever?
Patrick A. Rahming
April 26, 2024
“I don’t know how I got myself into this mess.”
This recent headline repeated the dilemma a young lady found herself in. According to her, she set out to do a favour for a friend, but now found herself up to her neck in negative results. While reading about her case, I wondered if perhaps this is how the members of the governments of the Bahamas over the past 40-odd years must feel today. They all thought that the path to greater prosperity for Bahamians lay in securing large, successful, foreign-owned tourism businesses that offer lots of employment, and providing them with the local resources for success. The current government has shown that they were most likely wrong. Especially over the past year, they have touted their role in making the cruise operations and the resorts in Nassau outrageously successful. They have not, however, been able to report on a concurrent booming economy or of any significantly greater prosperity for Bahamians as a result.
The Bahamian economy is based upon the tourism business, and while there may be many ways to structure a business, the two primary ways to make a living in tourism are to either work for a tourism enterprise, that is to be employed, or to provide tourism product and do business directly with tourists. The model we have pursued over the past four decades is the former, while promising the benefits of the latter. Beginning sometime in the 70’s we agreed to focus all our resources on the success of Foreign Direct Investors (how else would we get new investment dollars to fund our own success?). While the program has been a failure in most instances, It has been successful in Nassau and is presently the source of our considerable pride. The strategy we have adopted of providing generous incentives for these attractors of large numbers of visitors (land. Location. Tax relief, work permit concessions, “marketing assistance”, access to the highest offices in the nation and in some instances publicly choosing their business interests over local business interests) have worked. They are the successful “partners” we set out to create.
So, now is a great time to assess the success of that policy.
The large foreign-owned businesses we targeted are resorts and cruise ships. The current administration has helped drive a record-breaking success for both right in Nassau’s front yard. Both have publicly declared last year their best year ever. Numbers of visitors have almost doubled. Our Foreign Direct Investor “partners” have seen whopping profits (I’m not sure what portion of those profits were shared with the Bahamian people’s bank account as “partners”). It would stand to reason, then, that the Bahamian economy should also be experiencing its “best year ever”. Unfortunately, rather than doubled revenues from successful local business activity, government has had to raise money by incurring debt, raising fees and collecting outstanding debts. Most surprising is that there is practically no real tourism business activity on the island of New Providence – no attractions except government-run heritage sites, few entertainment opportunities with almost no show clubs or nightclubs with live music, less theater than existed 50 years ago, practically no museums or art and craft markets. Compared to the tourism activity on the island when the commitment to resorts was made, New Providence is destitute. While commercials boast about sharing our culture with visitors, there are precious few options for doing so. Nassau is certainly not a Tourist Destination. It has no customers of its own, no product for sale and therefore makes no significant contribution to the economy.
It is easy to blame this malaise on the problems of the past, like hurricanes, recessions, COVID or crime. But deep inside most of us know that something is terribly wrong. These factors have affected our “partners” as well. Even the blind can see that there is a disconnect between the success of cruise ships and resorts and the growth of the Bahamian economy. The source of that disconnect is a defunct Tourist Destination.
“But wait. If we have millions of tourists coming to our shores, doesn’t that mean we are a Tourist Destination? I believe we are the most successful Tourist Destination in the Caribbean.”
It does not. In our case it simply makes us a landlord for a number of successful tourism businesses. We are satisfied with employment and seem to be committed to remain out of the business, to leave that to the “big boys”
But what is a Tourist Destination, and why is it important to our economy?
A Tourist Destination is a community of people who agree to share their unique story. A Tourist Destination is a business, organized and managed by the community that makes money from direct tourist spending. The business requires the Tourist Destination to get their own customers into their business arena, to provide an inventory of attractions for sale and to create and maintain a business environment that encourages business success. It must also host its customers, selling accommodations, transportation and hospitality businesses. It is the reinvestment of the profits of the Tourist Destination community that fuels the growth of its economy.
Someone who buys a cruise is not buying a trip to Nassau, but has the opportunity to enjoy a limited-time tour of Nassau. Their contribution to Nassau’s economy is minimal. They are the customers of the cruise ship, not the destination. With their ticket they have bought their accommodations and almost all their hospitality needs., There is no need for transportation. This customer represents over 75% of our visitors.
Our definition of a resort is “an attraction with accommodations”. A resort’s story is its attraction. It sells accommodations, any transportation needed within its resort property and all of its customer’s hospitality needs. The resort’s guest is its customer, not the customer of the destination.
So, resorts and cruise ships both sell the same things a Tourist Destination sells (its story, accommodations, transportation and hospitality), and the three compete for customers globally. In the case of the Bahamas, only the local Tourist Destination is not pursuing its business interest with its resources. Its resources have already been committed to the success of its competition.
Krior to 1970, governments supported activities and events that brought visitors to Nassau, the destination. Events like Speed Week and the Miami-Nassau Powerboat Race and promotional trips that supported local nightclubs by exposing stars from the Cat and Fiddle and the Conch Shell produced a constant flow of visitors that kept hotels like the Prince George, the Winsor and the Carleton full. Once the focus was shifted to the full promotional and financial support of the resorts, those hotels and nightclubs died. With no visitors in the destination itself, the attractions died as well, leaving the hapless tourist destination business with no customers, no product to sell, therefore no profits with which to fuel the economy’s growth. And that is where we are today. We are boasting of the success of our competition and counting their customers as our customers. Anyone who says we are not succeeding must be crazy. On the other hand, are we feeling it yet?
“I only got into this to help my people. Look at all the jobs.”
For the past forty years, governments have paid for the resorts to get customers, neglecting their own business. Somewhere along the way, our own business as a Tourist Destination died. As noted, the resources we once put into attracting Tourist Destination customers have been committed to the cruise ships and the resorts. The fact that they are our competitors is not an issue. Competition is both healthy and potentially productive. It is the willful neglect of our own business that is the issue.
“I don’t know how I got myself in this mess.”
Ya lie.
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.
The first dot is an observation. On most days, anyone driving along Marlborough Street, in front of British Colonial Hotel would see a line of tourists either on their way to or from Junkanoo Beach. As it happens, Nassau is among the few cruise destinations in the world where it is possible to walk from the ship to the beach (except on private islands). While we are accustomed to seeing that traffic, most of us are unaware of its meaning as business. While the numbers might not be recorded, it is clear that on a daily basis, hundreds or thousands of potential customers head towards Junkanoo Beach to enjoy the beautiful white sand and crystal sea, and to enjoy laying under the Bahamian sun.
The second dot is the meaning of the word “tourist attraction”. An attraction is a place-specific experience which is made available as a business transaction. The three conditions required for an attraction to succeed are that it must be time and place specific, it must be customer-oriented and it must have a profit potential. Access to it may be free or paid. For example, swimming in the sea is free, but renting a towel to dry your body is an opportunity for commerce. Entrance to a museum or show might require payment. Junkanoo Beach presently has a few business operations, making it an attraction for visitors. Hanse it can be called a tourist attraction. The daily crowds headed there certainly think so.
Dot Number three is a Request for Proposals issued by the Ministry of Tourism in 2018 for the development and management of Junkanoo Beach. Of the several proposals received, a few were selected for final presentation to the Ministry. Those selected would have all converted the present anemic attraction into a world-class beach experience, with a new boardwalk, waterfront restaurants, craft markets, public facilities and proper organization of the beach to better serve both the visitors and vendors. The most important feature of the proposals was that the developers would have been local.
Dot number four takes us back many years to the launch of a policy called “Anchor Projects”. The policy, with which most people agreed at the time, was based upon the idea that large, foreign-owned resorts offered lots of jobs. The new policy was declared with the promise to locate an “Anchor Project” on every island, thereby guarantying high levels of employment. Whether using the term or not, this idea has been the policy of every government for the past 50 years or so. But while large resorts do in fact offer lots of employment, and are therefore beneficial to the stability of the economy, they do not contribute to the growth of the local economy, as the profits from those businesses are repatriated. However, the effort to attract these large projects has required the commitment of the resources with which governments might have developed the destination’s own tourism business. Instead, we have committed public land, tax revenue and access to government not offered locally, then paid annually for resorts to advertise for THEIR customers, while virtually abandoning our own tourism business, resulting in a destination judged the worst in the Caribbean for cruising. The destination has almost no customers of its own, very little product to sell, and therefore very little local profits.
The next dot is a speech by the Minister of Economic Affairs, in which he noted that there was a need for the Bahamas to accelerate the growth of its GDP if it wishes to have a healthy economy, and that his strategy for accomplishing this would be by a stronger focus on foreign direct investment. My understanding of the term Gross Domestic Product is that it is the sum total of domestic business activity. That would mean that the growth in the GDP requires an increase in LOCAL business, which usually requires the reinvestment of LOCAL profits. By definition, foreign investors take their profits back to wherever “foreign” is, which does not grow the local business platform. It therefore makes a difference whether the businesses our country invests in are owned by a foreign investor or by a Bahamian entity.
The final dot is the sudden and unexplained cancellation of the Ministry of Tourism’s RFP for Junkanoo Beach after months of review, followed less than eighteen months later by the approval of a lease for a similar beach experience on Paradise Island, to be owned by a cruise line, both by the same government. The Government of the Bahamas appears to have decided that it was better to have a foreign developer offer a beach attraction than a local entity (either at Junkanoo Beach or on Paradise Island where another local developer was reportedly being supplanted) providing the same experience. What makes that decision so strange is that the evidence of traffic to the local attraction (the proof of concept, so to speak) already existed, and continues to exist. In fact, as stated in another forum, inviting the cruise line to open its own a business in our front door is contrary to any principle guiding our relationship. The relationship between the Bahamas and any cruise ship is that they are invited to cruise our waters and offer their passengers access to our sun, sand and sea and cultural experiences in exchange for them delivering customers for our tourism businesses. Ownership of businesses in our country is not part of that relationship. Local developers would be able to provide those experiences if treated to the support their offshore friends are accustomed to.
Now we can step back and see what we have drawn. It is a picture of a very sluggish and underfed economy. It shows healthy foreign investors being well taken care of by successive governments while local businesses struggle for both attention and resources. Wow! Boy, we could draw good.
This first statement is not meant to be an analogy or an example. What I am about to claim is the factual truth. The people of the Bahamas own and operate a business enterprise. Each one of us is a shareholder in the business and we depend on that business to provide us with real, bankable profits. The business is called Tourism, and it sells whatever we wish to share of our country’s story. In this discussion I will describe the business environment as a mall (perhaps we will call it the Destination Mall). In our mall, which is owned by the citizens of the country, we sell our stories in shops called Attractions. These mostly privately owned attractions are arranged in categories called Place, History, Beliefs and Lifestyle, and there are five types of attractions to be found: tours, events, retail attractions, resorts and published attractions. The attractions are either individually owned and operated, or operated by the mall on behalf of its owners. The Destination depends on the success of these attraction-shops and the re-investment of their profits to expand the mall. There are, however, shops in the mall that are not locally owned and whose profits do not contribute to the mall’s expansion, but because they employ locals, they contribute to the stability of the business environment. Generally, they are on the periphery of the mall, and on occasion their customers may enter the mall to shop. The strategic direction of the mall is Government’s responsibility and they have chosen the Ministry of Tourism as its General Manager.
Unfortunately, the owners of the mall (the Bahamian people) don’t know that they own the mall. They think it is owned by the Government, who grants licenses in the mall on the basis of its generosity. Further, having determined that finding jobs is the most important benefit they can offer their citizens, Government has decided that growing the foreign-owned, peripheral businesses should be the national policy. They therefore provide them with whatever resources they can muster, including helping them get their customers. Not much is left for for creating a marketing strategy for driving customers to the people’s Destination Mall. As a result result the mall is practically empty. Its attraction-shops are mostly closed and those that are open struggle, hoping for business from the few customers that straggle in from the foreign-owned shops. Their income is meagre, and is therefore not reported to the owners. Instead the General Manager presents glowing reports of the number of customers in the general area, mostly the customers of the foreign-owned businesses. Few of whom shop in the mall.
The managers of the mall (Government) know that for a business to succeed it must have customers of its own, salable product and profits. Yet they do not seem to connect the derelict condition of the mall with the absence of mall customers or the lack of product for sale, and they continue to rely on the beauty of the mall building to attract customers. Clearly, it’s not working. Partly because they don’t realize they own the business, the shareholders (and the managers) also ignore industry reports that the Destination Mall is the worst in the region, with practically no salable product, and that few of the mall’s shops have profits to re-invest. Local investors therefore have no confidence in the mall as a business environment and consider tourism a risky investment. Yet management regularly declares the expectation that the mall will expand.
But the need to tell our own story is not primarily to support our national business. It is a fundamental requirement for the healthy development as our community, and the fact that we have neglected to celebrate the specialness of our place, history, belief systems and our lifestyle has left both an absence of product for our business and a lack of support for the rearing of our children. The fact that we are no longer telling our own story is detrimental to our children’s self-image, who are bombarded with other stories in the global media, challenging both the passage of values and the sense of pride in who and what they are. Contrary to what I have heard from some young people, the business of Tourism is not a threat to our culture. Not having a significant display of our culture in our environment is the greater threat to our culture. Tourism gives us the opportunity to “show off” our culture while building a healthy community and a wealthy economy.
But for that we need our Destination Mall to re-focus its management, first to create a significant stock of attraction-shops selling our Bahamian story through tours, retail attractions, events, resorts and print and media publications, then to focus its marketing efforts on driving customers directly into our Destination Mall. While we appreciate the spill-over business from the foreign-owned shops our primary income is derived from our own customers, those we call “stopover” visitors to the Destination Mall. The record shows that a customer coming directly to the Destination Mall spends up to 16 times as much as one that comes from the foreign-owned shop. For the mall to succeed we must have our own customers. For the mall to grow the attraction-shops must succeed and reinvest their profits.
The business of Tourism once provided wealth and development in the Bahamas, as it does in dozens of cities and countries globally. For us it no longer does. As owners and managers, we should be very concerned.
“Efforts to secure a buyer who can transform the resort and help make Freeport Grand Bahama a true tourism destination, have endured numerous false dawns with deals failing to come to fruition ………” (The Tribune, September 16 2022)
To understand why successive governments feel the need – the desperate need – to rescue failed resorts, it is necessary to travel back almost 50 years to revisit the creation of what has become a staple of our tourism policies, and the thinking behind it. In the early years of the first PLP administration, the fact that large resorts were the source of large numbers of jobs led to the conclusion that courting large foreign-owned resorts would ensure a high level of employment for Bahamians. Having committed to the development of the middle class, high levels of employment seemed like a good idea, and the new government formalized a policy it called “Anchor Projects”, with the objective of locating large resorts all over the country. It was assumed that resort development was, by definition, in the best interest of the country’s tourism business.
Fifty years later, having witnessed the decline of that tourism business, both major political parties still believe in that policy, despite the fact that most of the resort projects proposed over those fifty years have not materialized. The assumption appears to be that the declining market position in tourism has been the result of the failure to get enough of those resorts located and/or operational. The thought that the very effort to find and locate those resorts may have been the reason for the decline of the national business has, it appears, never been considered. The Grand Lucayan debacle may be a good opportunity to discuss that possibility.
In pursuance of this “Anchor Project” policy, we have become accustomed to rescuing, buying and maintaining failed resorts, to enticing new resorts with public land, very generous incentive packages and even maintaining a seat at the government’s table for resort developers, all in the interest of possible jobs. The announcement of every new project is accompanied by a slavish projection of the number of jobs to be secured.
On March 16 2016, it was reported that the Minister of Tourism, Obie Wilchcombe, predicted “big things for Grand Bahama if a major hotel brand is secured to operate it.” A few days later, the late David Johnson, former Deputy Director of Tourism, said “If the approved bidder is a developer who will recruit first rate operators, and will invest to raise the product and service, Grand Bahama will resume its growth….”
A year later, in a campaign speech, Former Prime Minister Perry Christie confirmed that a Letter of Intent for the purchase of the Grand Lucayan had been signed. The deal was never consummated, and the Bahamas Government finally purchased the complex in 2018, and have been trying to sell it ever since, so far without success. According to one newspaper article the cost of purchasing and holding the resort is approaching $200M and rising.
Consider the following two questions about the Grand Lucayan.
- Why did the resort fail in the first place?
- Is it true that Freeport’s future depends on its sale and operation?
The description of the Royal Lucayan property makes it sound similar to Baha Mar Resort in Nassau – three residential blocks, 2 golf courses, a casino, all located on an attractive stretch of beachfront. Yet it has taken more than eight years to convince anyone other than government to buy it.
So, why did the resort fail in the first place?
Perhaps the explanation is in the description of the property. If, as we assert, a resort is an attraction that has its own accommodations, then the amount of accommodations must relate to the power of the attraction to attract customers. For the Grand Lucayan there are three possible attractions that would have to deliver customers to fill the 1100 rooms built.
For a resort in a golf destination, the number of rooms might have been only a little optimistic. But Freeport has not been a golf destination since it lost the PGA-sanctioned Princess Properties courses. And in any case it is reported that the Grand Lucayan courses have been closed since 2011. Obviously, golf was not expected to fill those rooms.
Secondly, since the proliferation of casinos in the region, the casino would no longer be an attraction, although it would be a valuable amenity. It would not, however, entice many visitors. Once there is traffic, it would certainly add to the resort’s experience.
That leaves only the beach, and the beach at the Grand Lucayan site would probably support only 200 to 300 rooms.
The project as presently configured would struggle to survive simply because it violates the basic requirements for the design of a resort. This is most likely the reason it has been difficult to find a buyer, because the additional investment to create the more substantial attraction to fill the number of rooms built would most likely be excessive. So, the first reason the Grand Lucayan is a bad investment for the public purse is that it is presently a bad investment, period. It failed because it would have been difficult, if not impossible to fill the number of rooms built on the site without a significant investment in a viable attraction or a major contribution from the destination itself.
The second question is how important to the success of Freeport is the sale of the Grand Lucayan? The answer is not at all. The statement of its importance is based upon a false premise. It assumes that the economy of Freeport is fueled primarily by contributions from resorts. It is not. The economy of Freeport, like that of the country, is fueled by the success of the destination’s own business, for which the resorts contribute only employment.
There are two kinds of entities in the tourism business in the Bahamas. The first is the foreign-owned tourism business that provides the Bahamas with employment or minimal sales of tours and souvenirs in exchange for the permission to operate out of the Bahamas. In the Freeport environment this is what a resort or a cruise ship is. This type of business makes little or no contribution to the growth of the economy because its profits are not reinvested locally. They are owned by Foreign Direct Investors and their profits are shipped overseas.
The second type of business is part of the local tourism business, a larger business owned and operated by the Bahamian people. These businesses provide the local product and infrastructure for the country’s tourism business (museums, restaurants, tours, heritage sites, festivals etc.). They are locally owned, and the profits are reinvested in the local economy, stimulating growth. The destination’s business is what fuels the local economy.
To answer the question, then, neither the success of the resorts nor the success of the cruise business is a key to the growth of the Freeport economy unless the destination business is functional. Freeport’s destination business has been dormant for a long time, with practically no stimulus for real internal investment. What would the $200M “invested” in the Grand Lucayan do if it were invested to rebuild Freeport’s destination business?
Freeport, the Destination, currently cannot attract tourists. It has no customer-attraction strategy. Like the rest of the country, it relies on the customers of the foreign-owned businesses operating in its jurisdiction and accepts the poor results.
The Grand Lucayan deal is a huge mistake and a waste of public funds. As one writer suggested, we must know when to say when, and now is a great time to re-direct our resources to creating destination attractions to begin developing a reason for someone to visit Freeport again.
A previous government minister asked me if I was seriously asking him to suggest to his Cabinet colleagues that they spend $10M to create a new destination attraction. Since then, his Cabinet colleagues One have spent at least $40M just holding onto a project that would not contribute to Freeport’s ability to attract customers for its destination business, and therefore to grow its GDP at all. Time to say when.
Bureaucrats imagine that everything can be solved by a change in administration. We, the public, have bought into that idea, and when something does not work, we demand a change in administration. Sometimes, though, the problem is the system not the administrators For example, we believe that a new administration, headed by a new government, will solve the problem of the limited benefits from our national business, tourism. We complain, for example, that on New Providence there is no apparent benefit from tourism over most of the island, and each new administration promises to find ways to bring economic benefit “over the hill”. Yet year after year, administration after administration, the blight continues. To satisfy us, the bureaucrats simply hold up bigger tourism numbers.
To understand the numbers presented and the extent to which they may or may not represent success, here are a few important definitions. First, there is the definition of a customer. A customer is not someone who merely passes through your shop or business, but someone who does business with you, who purchases the product you are offering. Calling a cruise ship passenger your customer is disingenuous, at least. They are the customers of the cruise lines, and we are, at most, a tour. The destination’s customer is someone who buys the destination’s attractions, lives in the destination’s accommodations, uses the destination’s hospitality, is transported by the destination’s taxis and engages with the destination’s vendors generally. The last numbers I heard were that the cruise passenger spends less than $100 a head while passing through our shop, while the stopover visitor (the destination’s customer) spends $1300. Thirteen to sixteen times as much. Clearly counting cruise passengers is deceptive, but itavoids the fact that the destination is largely without customers of its own.
The second definition is the definition of a resort versus a hotel. A resort is an attraction with its own accommodations. As a business it is selling an experience, and has accommodations for its customers. It is therefore its own destination. A hotel, on the other hand, sells accommodations, and gets its business from the destination’s success in attracting customers. If the destination is popular, hotels do well. If not, they die. A visitor who has booked a week at a resort like Atlantis may spend his entire week at the resort and leave without ever visiting New Providence, fully satisfied with his purchase. He would not have been the customer of Nassau as a destination, but of Atlantis, the resort. When we count the resort’s customer as the destination’s customer, we risk not noticing critical things about our own business. For example, almost every hotel on New Providence went out of business during the 1970’s (Montague, Prince George, Carleton, Windsor, Mayfair, Drake), and we paid no attention because of the success of the Cable Beach and Paradise Island resorts, whose customers we assumed were ours.
So, now we can look at those tourism numbers with perhaps a more critical eye. In 2019, when we recorded over 7 million visitors, 5.5million were cruise visitors (well over three quarters), and at least 15% would have been the customers of the larger resorts in Nassau. Out of the 7 million visitors, then, less than a million were actually customers of the destination. We appear not to measure that number, since even the government does not acknowledge the difference between a resort and a hotel, between its customers and those of the resorts.
The final definition is the requirements for a successful business. Regardless of the kind of business you run, there are three things you must have to succeed. You must have your own customers, product that is salable in the market and you must be making a profit. Without customers of our own, the rest is academic.A business depending on someone else’s customer cannot sustain itself. Yet successive governments have committed to a formula in which they support those whose tourism businesses are simply located in the Bahamas in the hope of getting some residual return (primarily employment), while ignoring changes in our own tourism business. In the time our stopover numbers went from 1.4 million in 1991 to 1.6 million in 2018, the Dominican Republic’s went from about 786,000 to 6.4 million. During all that time we were boasting of success and garnering awards.
To create an analogy, we have been refining the air conditioning in our car while the battery has had no cables. For the past four or five decades we have spent money advertising and promoting the Bahamas and supporting the marketing of resorts. The results have been abysmal, falling from the leading destination in the region to at least fourth. Our tourism product is in shambles, with practically no contact between visitors and our story. Even as a cruise destination we are the largest but the worst. What are we doing wrong and what should we be doing?
When someone tells us that tourism based on sun, sand and sea is no longer working, we quickly arrange a survey and “prove” that people love our beautiful sun, sand and sea, then continue the same promotion, undaunted. The fact is that, while it is true that people love sun, sand and sea, they can now get it in a million places, easier and at lower cost than in the Bahamas. Plus, there are travel devices (like the cruise) that offer it as a bi-product of their service. While offering it as an amenity, it is time to acknowledge that the Bahamas needs a new tourism customer-getting strategy. Or more correctly, to re-implement the strategy that made the country successful in the first place.
There are three customer-getting devices in use globally. Destinations choose one or a combination of three devices as a branding mechanism and commit to it long-term. Tourist destinations are known for either events, activities or the existence of Special Places. For example, New Orleans is known for its commitment to events. The Dominican Republic is known for the activity of golf. Niagara Falls is a special place. Sixty years ago, we had a commitment to a combination of events and special places. Our environment offered special places galore, and we developed events like Speed Week, the Miami-Nassau Powerboat Race, Miami-Nassau Sailboat Race, celebrity sports events (Muhammed Ali’s final fight), Bimini billfish tournaments and a host of others. The result was what us old folk brag about – tourism all over the country making lots of money and increased wealth for Bahamians. Today, not only is there precious little intended to create destination customers, those of us with an intention to create such devices do so with the least assistance from government, as if they are subverting some carefully guarded secret agenda.
This, of course, is a national concern, not just a Nassau problem. Freeport lost its customer-getting system when their casino lost its exclusivity as casinos appeared in Florida and the rest of the Bahamas, as Disney’s success made the idea behind the International Bazaar, themed shopping, common in the US, and when they gave up golf as a destination activity. Like Nassau, its economy will not improve until it creates a new customer-getting strategy.
Next, there is product. The loss of customers of our own meant the death of the attractions that depended on those customers. Nightclubs, restaurants, art galleries, museums, even the heritage attractions, all suffered and, in many cases died. Without support they have not been reborn. That is why the destination ratees so badly today. A focus on strategies for the development of attractions is not just a personal goal, but critical to the success of the destination. First, government must be as generous with incentives for the production of viable attractions as it has been with paying resorts and airlines to bring visitors who can’t find anything to spend their money on. This is not a favour to entertainers and attraction operators. It is necessary for the destination’s survival. The business cannot make money without product to sell. There should have been a division of the Ministry of Tourism tasked with the development of product years ago. Sadly, the division that promised to do so has not yet engaged with the attractions industry.
Finally, there is the need to change the attitude that separates tourists from locals. Yes, there is a need for us to have a look at how we behave (mostly towards one another), but we must understand that what we are selling in the business of tourism is the one thing nobody else in the world can offer – our story. Product is created from our unique place, our unique history, our unique belief systems and our lifestyle. It is both business and psychological suicide to try to pretend we don’t exist as part of our own story. We are who we are. If we don’t like how that shows up we might choose to change some things. But we cannot continue to leave ourselves out of our own story and hope to improve our tourism business. For maximum success, we must tell our story in our built environment, in art, craft, theater, literature, music and dance with pride, and know that that is what our customers came prepared to spend their money for.
Customers of our own, product telling the story of our place, our history, our beliefs and our unique way of life and the knowledge that our story is value for anybody’s money. That is what we need. To get it we must commit to a more effective customer-getting strategy, to major investment in the telling of our story and to really believing in the value of our own story.
“Hey! I’ve got a question for you. What is this Local Government thing, really?”
Good question.
You work for a big bank, with headquarters in Canada. They have a Board of Directors and a big management team, right? They make all the big decisions about the company – where to have branches, what products to sell, when to downsize, that kind of thing. But you don’t rely on them to tell you who to hire to clean the office or what brand of paper to use, do you? They take care of the big, global stuff, and your manager here handles the local decisions. The bank’s headquarters sets the policies, but the local management figures out how to make the bank most profitable in this environment. The better the local managers do their job, the more profitable the company is. Local Government frees the National Government to deal with the big decisions, with creating the national policies, and leaves the local decisions to local management, improving the country’s overall performance.
“Makes sense. But isn’t that what we do now?”
Not really. Some years ago there was an incident on a Family Island where someone had been locked up by a local administrator, and it was said that the Representative, a Government Minister, made a telephone call, and the person was freed. It doesn’t matter what really happened. What matters is that a National Government Minister made a call to a so-called Local Government administrator who felt that he was being instructed to make a particular decision. The Minister didn’t even have to say, “Do this”. What we call Local Government is really an extension of the National Government. The matter in question was purely local, and should not have had National interference. The Minister represented Head Office, but there was no local management, only supervisors.
“So, you think it’s worth spending the money to have more government? It sounds very expensive.”
That, too, is a good question. Can we afford Local Government? The answer is we have no choice. Local Government is necessary if we want a government that helps us to really develop the country. Here are five reasons:
- You can’t focus on two things at the same time, and neither can the Government. They have to focus on national issues, to create strategies for relationships with other countries, national defense, health systems, taxation and the overall planning for the country’s future. There’s no way they can also focus on who picks up your garbage or cleans your car or paints the local school or teacher’s residence. Recently, an article drew attention to the poor maintenance of Government buildings. The size of the bureaucracy needed to pay close attention to what is likely a thousand buildings would be enormous and unwieldy. Nor can it focus on what you need to create a better local community environment or to improve your local economy. Those things are for you to focus on. The first reason we need Local Government is better Governance.
- As a citizen, you are responsible for the success of your country. You expect to live up to that responsibility by participating in the decision-making process, not just by choosing someone to make decisions for you every five years. Making noise is not an effective form of participation in the building of the nation. You deserve the opportunity to participate in the development of the policies and programs that your children will inherit, and for which Government will spend your tax dollars. The second reason we need Local Government is Participation in the process of Government..
- Sustained development requires sustained focus. The National Government’s responsibility is to respond to the current needs of the country as a whole. Your community’s agenda will therefore seldom be its focus. Hence, we have become accustomed to the Government’s habit of “launch and leave”. There must be an agenda that keeps the focus on the long-term health of the local community and avoids the all-too-common shifting of focus after changes in national leadership. The third reason we need Local Government is Sustained local Development.
- Leadership is trained, not selected or anointed. The training ground for political leaders is in the communities, at the local level, not in Cabinet. We would all have a laugh if we heard that someone was trying to get hired by the Lakers as point guard who had never played the game before. But that is exactly what we do to political aspirants, then ridicule them when they fumble the ball. You will never get growth in the quality of leadership without the availability of Local Government as a training ground. The fourth reason we need Local Government is Leadership Training.
- The economy of the nation is the sum total of the economies of the various communities throughout the country. Vibrant local economies require sustained, local direction and local decision-making, especially about incentives, forward planning, the use of local resources and the conditions for investment. Local Government is able to maintain a focus on the vision for the local economy, and to make decisions that are in keeping with that vision. The fifth reason we need Local Government is the Building of the Economy.
“Wow! I never realized how important Local Government is.”
The Bahamas is the only country I’ve found that doesn’t have at least a second level of government. The US, for example, has four or five levels: the Federal, the State, County, Municipal or City and (in the case of New York City) the Borough levels. Each is organized around a clear set of responsibilities and resources, with the objective of providing every citizen with the most personal attention possible. While the weight of multiple levels may be too much, we certainly deserve some level of local self-determination. I know we are a special people, but denying ourselves good governance, participation in the process, better local development, basic leadership training and a more vibrant economy is certainly not an expression of our most progressive nature.
Jackson Burnside is reputed to have once said
“We don’t see what we’re looking at.”
This brilliant observation is complicated by the fact that, looking at the same thing, we also often see different things. We all see the world differently, depending on our mindset, whether because of our background or our mood. That is why paintings by different artists painting the same landscape look completely different. One might record a photorealistic view of the scene, while another might focus on patterns of color or texture. One might make the close-up scene the focus while the other might share the beauty of the distant hillside. All of the paintings would be a true representation of the scene, although they would all look different. That is one of the things that make the world such an interesting place. Hopefully, those artists help us see more of our world.
As we look at those pictures, as a result of different artistic points of view, we get to appreciate new ways to see the same things. The landscape may not change, but the appreciation for it, the close-up details, the patterns in nature and the captivating distant view become new experiences for those familiar with the location. The same is true with a song sung by different singers, or sculpture or food or wedding dresses.
This ability to find new experiences in familiar things is at the root of our ability to create change in our society. Art is a mirror, held up for us to see ourselves in ways we might be familiar with or not, ways that make us comfortable or uncomfortable. Those comfortable views of us reinforce our present direction, make us feel better about ourselves. Uncomfortable views cause us to question our present ways of being and consider the need or opportunity for change. While the response is always personal, the process becomes societal as we share our responses to the mirror, both as individuals and as a society. Just as a mirror on our wall helps us to develop a concern for our bodies and alter our behavior accordingly, the mirror we call art helps us to choose better social goals and provide the inspiration to change our behavior accordingly.
That is most likely why, in 1965, the Americans established national support for the production and display of art. The Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts, an organization that provides funding to support non-profit art organizations and individuals involved in research and, in special cases, writing. They also included public support by inclusion of benefits in the tax system. They created a web of support that has created what we see as a prolific art community and a reputation as a strong national community. Other nations have created versions of this system of support, to great benefit.
What does all this mean?
The Bahamas is celebrating its 50th anniversary as an independent country. Especially over the past few years, it has become obvious that no one is proud of the sense of community in our society. Most people wonder how we could have arrived at a place where our children behave like monsters, our citizens display a greedy, selfish, entitled attitude and there seems to be little interest in creating or sustaining strong communities. At least twice a year, there are voices on radio and TV begging Bahamians to have pride.
I am not for a minute suggesting that we are short of artists in our society. For the record, I believe we are the most gifted people on the planet. But by itself that does not translate to mirrors on the wall. A play without a stage has no audience. A painting without a wall will languish in storage. A dance without a dancefloor will only itch. A piece of sculpture without a place to stand becomes a doorstop. In other words, for our artists to share their insights, to erect mirrors for our development, there must be facilities and infrastructure. For us to share our differences and our similarities, we need theaters, auditoria, concert halls, art galleries and the like.
In the 50 years since independence, we have commissioned one major art gallery, one museum, no theaters, no schools for the performing arts, no public art and no celebration of our heroes in art. We have also avoided the opportunity to expose our children to the art of our Caribbean community, having renegued on three commitments to host Carifesta between 1983 and 2010. We have created national performance groups, then starved them to death. In short, we have been far more interested in how the outside world sees us than how we see ourselves, and the lack of mirror images has led to national insecurity and bad behavior. The lack of support has been shocking, given that our national business is the telling of our story for tourism and the astronomical spending by successive governments on promoting non-existant cultural product.
For example, the folks at the Dundas Center have made a phenomenal commitment to share at least one Bahamian theatrical piece each month to celebrate our 50th anniversary. The series began in October. Unfortunately, the theater is closed for renovation and cannot host the events, so they are being held in the Black Box, a makeshift space. For the past half a century the Dundas has been the only public theater available to playwrights, actors, dancers and the like. Why should it be shuttered for such an important tribute to Bahamian art, for the cost of a new air conditioning system?
Clearly there is a need for us to appreciate how much we need mirrors and the need to begin to develop infrastructure for the training, development and display of the work of our artists. To say our leaders do not understand the requirements for human development would be an understatement. I trust that this 50th anniversary will ignite the nation’s commitment to make art, the mirror we need to build whatever future we finally dream, possible.
Oh! The other reason art is important is that it makes the world we live in much more beautiful, and therefore enjoyable.
The New Year is a time to stop, reflect on the previous year and chart a course for the New Year. Most people commit to New Year’s Resolutions that frame actions or attitudes they hope to have during the up-coming year. The nation might benefit from the same process, of course, and many of us wish to see certain things during the up-coming year that we feel would be nationally beneficial. In that spirit we looked back and wondered what we could wish for ther nation for 2023 that would make a stronger, better nation when we look back in a year. Instead of specific actions or events we might pursue over the course of the year, we decided that it would be more beneficial if we considered the beliefs and thoughts that would frame those actions. Here, then, are five beliefs we would encourage during this New Year, regardless of what actions we might choose to pursue.
Religion
“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me”
Vince Gill
The most divisive force in the world is religion. Wars, hatred and anger are blamed on what is supposed to be man’s search for his God. Religion is the device created by humans to organize his personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe and everything in it. Just about every religion confirms two truths:
- There is one force that created the Universe, the one we call God
- That we are all its children
Therefore, there are no enemies, just family we don’t know. I wish that belief to underpin our national efforts this year and beyond.
Party Politics
“…they say if you don’t vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Party politics is a way to offer the citizens of a nation alternative ways to solve national problems. Parties are expected to disagree on how to solve those problems and how to create the best nation, but that does not mean that the members of either party wishes to destroy the nation they are trying to build for their grandchildren. The best results from a party-pollitical environment requires citizens to become aware of the problems being addressed and the alternatives being offered. That is the job of being a citizen. Making decisions based upon club membership short-changes the future and diminishes the country we create.
The Job of a Government
“Governments are responsible for providing services that individuals cannot effectively provide for themselves, such as military defense, fire and police….”
Encyclopedia.com
The job of a government is to create an maintain an environment in which every citizen has the opportunity to develop to his or her full potential. To succeed in that job it must continuously maintain the systems that satisfy the needs for physical survival (Commerce), safety/security (the Rule of Law), the development of a sense of community (Cultural Activity), a sense of our value in the society (Recognition aand Appreciation) and self-actualization or fulfillment (Training and Education). I find that most people involved in front-line politics are at the very least foggy on this job description, and that the public thinks Government’s job is to be as benevolent as possible with the nation’s resources. The fact is that the Constitution spells out what Governments should be giving to citizens as part of the satisfaction of those five systems above, and everything else is not government, but politics.
Natural Resources
“And I dream of the vast deserts, the forests, and all of the wilderness of our continent, wild places that we should protect as a precious heritage for our children and for our children’s children. We must never forget that it is our duty to protect this environment.”
— Nelson Mandela.
The most important natural resource a nation has is the imagination of its people, and it is through the opportunities for exposure to cultural and creative activity that that muscle is developed and strengthened. As it happens, cultural activity is also the primary ingredient in the development of a sense of community and a strong identity. The imagination of its people is therefore the most important element in the development of a strong nation and the key to nation-building.
Economic Development
“As we are pursuing economic growth and economic development, we have to make sure it happens with and by and for everyone. That everyone gets opportunity.”
Betsy Hodges
Economic development requires the building of wealth in the local economy, not employment alone. Access to financial education must begin early in the schooling process, and Government must understand that the purpose of financial institutions must be to make local wealth creation possible. The licensing of financial institution must be based upon their role in local wealth creation. While job creation has its place, wealth creation must underpin all government’s efforts at economic development.
These are five of my personal beliefs, although in conversation I find that most of the people I know wish they were part of a wider belief system. I wish these beliefs for a successful 2023 for my Bahamas.
Pat Rahming : From The Black Book 