Wilson: Marathon Bahamas generated over 3,000 hotel room nights

Mon, Jan 16th 2012, 08:37 AM

The Marathon Bahamas race weekend generated more than 3,000 hotel room nights during a traditionally weak tourism period, said event organizer and founder Franklyn Wilson.
Wilson, chairman of Arawak Homes Ltd., said participants from over 20 countries came to New Providence to take part in Marathon Bahamas and the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.
He said the races, while raising money and awareness for cancer research, also served to bolster the tourism sector during the January lull.
"What started as Marathon Bahamas is now an event, which is targeted at encouraging people to come and spend four nights (in The Bahamas)," Wilson said on the sidelines of the marathon's finish line at Arawak Cay yesterday.
"We are pretty certain this year we would have generated over 3,000 room nights in tourism, we're pretty confident about that.  The Ministry of Tourism encouraged us to move this event to the middle of January, specifically to try and provide an anchor to try and turn around what is historically been a slow period for The Bahamas in tourism.  Mid-January is not a busy period for hotels generally.
"So the idea is to use an event like Marathon Bahamas to become the catalyst to hopefully change that whole pattern and the potential is there.  We work on this thing hard enough, long enough and we can do that.  Mid-January can go from being a slow period to a very busy period."
While he could not give specific numbers on turnout for Marathon Bahamas and Saturday's Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, Wilson said the registration numbers for both events surpassed last year's figures.
As the event, now in its third year, continues to grow Wilson is focused on attracting more international corporate sponsors and partners.
Representatives from Bank of Nova Scotia and UPS have already expressed interest in expanding their involvement in the race, he said.
"This year more and more businesses thought of the idea of not just sponsoring this event from their local budget, but going to their international affiliates or distributors and saying 'listen here's an opportunity for you to build your brand, not just in The Bahamas but through The Bahamas," said Wilson.
In addition to raising money and awareness, Wilson said organizers plan to use the funds raised to purchase a state-of-the-art mammogram machine for the Princess Margaret Hospital.
"It's more than just cancer research.  It's useful for the public to understand it's very difficult to build a word-class hospital only with government support.  The private sector has to help make a good hospital a great hospital.  It has been brought to our attention that the mammogram machine at Princess Margaret Hospital, it works, (but) is it state-of-the-art?  No. There's an opportunity to do something there, we are focused on seeing to what extent this whole thing can cause that to change."
The race weekend began with a roundtable discussion at the Cancer Society of the Bahamas headquarters on Friday, the Susan G. Komen race on Saturday and culminated with yesterday's marathon.
During the roundtable discussion, it was revealed that the researchers who are part of an ongoing study into breast cancer prevalence in The Bahamas found three additional gene mutations.
As a result of their study, researchers have found nine gene mutations in the women they have screened.
The Bahamas has a high incidence of breast cancer.

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