In the first three quarters of 2023, The Bahamas welcomed more than 7.2 million visitors, equalling in nine months the total number of arrivals for all of 2019. The island archipelago is squarely on target to welcome more than 8 million visitors this year.
The Ministry of Tourism, Investments & Aviation says arrivals by air and sea, from January through the end of September 2023, numbered 7,209,165. Of this record number of visitors to our beautiful islands, 1,332,752 came by air and 5,876,413 came by sea as total arrivals are outpacing 2019 by 33%.
Elaborating on the country's 2023 tourism performance, the Hon. I. Chester Cooper, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Minister of Tourism, Investments & Aviation, said:
Chester Cooper Bahamas minister of tourism (Photo Credit: Bahamas Ministry of Tourism)
"The overall goal of our efforts in tourism is to continually increase visitor arrival numbers to our destination, year after year. Our tourism performance in 2023 has been spectacular on two fronts. We have surpassed the tourism benchmark year of 2019 across all metrics, and our visitor arrival numbers are a resounding indication of a complete post-pandemic rebound."
Cruise arrivals from the beginning of the year through September are up 61% over the corresponding period in 2022, and 45% ahead of 2019. Foreign air arrivals, which include stopovers and day visitors, are up 21% over the same period in 2022 and stopover visitors through September are just shy of the total number of stopover visitors for the same period of 2019.
Hotel occupancy is up over 2019, with average daily room rates and room revenue significantly ahead of that year. The Bahamas also continues to see gains in the overall spend of visitors onshore.
Cooper hailed the result as a confluence of strategic planning and hotel and cruise operators' continued confidence in the strength of The Bahamas brand. He said, "we are now certain to have a record year for tourism arrivals, and it's no fluke."
The tourism minister pointed out that the metrics are also changing with stopover visitors. "We see that room rates are nearly 60 percent higher than they were in 2019, yet occupancy rates are higher and room nights sold continues to increase."
"This is the strongest tourism has ever been,” Cooper says, “and we only expect our performance to get stronger."
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