Southern islands such as Cat Island, Crooked Island, Acklins and Inagua continue to struggle with getting their economies on track, according to the director general at the Ministry of Tourism.
David Johnson shared with Guardian Business that smaller hotels located in the southeastern part of the country have distribution issues. In an effort to generate more business into these properties, the Ministry of Tourism, in conjunction with the Bahamas Out Islands Promotion Board, is looking to start a fund that will enable smaller hotels to have a more effective distribution system.
"The fund won't have much more than $30,000 to provide the technical support, as we look to get them into the digital realm with their bookings. That's what we are talking about. We have agreed in principle, but we are looking to execute this soon. This is really for the smaller hotels within the Family Islands, and most of them are in the southeast," he noted.
Johnson believes initiatives like these will help to improve their marketing strategies.
Other issues, he added, include insufficient and expensive airlift to these islands.
"With these rebate programs that we're offering, we are looking to make an adjustment because airfares are even more expensive than the other islands. These adjustments need to be made, so they are able to be more competitive. We are reviewing how we can make an adjustment and hope to reach an agreement on that very shortly."
According to Charity Armbrister, tourism's director of central and southern Bahamas, these islands are still struggling mostly due to airlift. Until that issue is resolved, Armbrister said it will be difficult for them to reach their potential.
"For example, we have persons coming in from the UK and the connecting flights are just not there, so they have to overnight in Nassau, which is really not what they want. They are coming to the islands and they want to get there as quickly as possible in the most inexpensive way. Airlift is on top of the ministry's agenda," she explained.
"The booking engine is key to addressing this issue. When visitors go online, they book a flight into The Bahamas. Then they say they need to connect, and there is no real global booking engine. So they don't get to see the Pineapple Air, Western Air or the Southern Air. Unless there is a code share with Bahamasair or something like that, the visitors just don't know about it and so it makes it very complicated. We are hoping to see an improvement in that area in 90 days."
Meanwhile, Armbrister further revealed that most islands have seen an increase over the last year in room nights, which is encouraging:
"I would say Harbour Island, Exuma and Eleuthera are the strongest islands. Long Island has shown one of the largest increases, like maybe 20 percent. That's really encouraging.

Most of the islands have seen an increase over last year in room nights, so we are very excited about that. We are hoping that we can get back to 2008/2009 when things were much better. With the Two Fly Free and these kinds of incentives, we think we are going to make it happen sometime soon."

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