Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D'Aguilar revealed yesterday that Nassau Airport Development Company's (NAD) credit rating has been downgraded.
While NAD's credit rating downgrade has never been officially announced, D'Aguilar broke the news to reporters after a Cabinet session, placing the blame solely on the fiscal imprudence of the previous government. He added that any increase in ticket taxes will have an impact on visitors coming to our country.
"The NAD debt suffered a downgrade due to the deteriorating state of our economy, and that's why they got downgraded, not because of any fault of NAD but because of the awful state of our economy," he said.
NAD revealed last week that it was planning to increase certain fees for domestic and international passengers to help service some of its debt obligations. The changes are expected to take effect on December 1, 2017.
In a statement issued yesterday, NAD said it does not anticipate any "material impact" on passenger traffic as a result of the proposed fee hikes.
The total cost per passenger as a result of the proposed increase would move the cost up by 4.7 percent.
The airport's current total cost per passenger is $175; the price hike would leave it at $183.00.
NAD also recently revealed that the Linden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) scored high marks in an American Society for Quality (ASQ) survey.
LPIA saw more than 3.29 million visitors pass through its doors and landed more than 81,000 aircraft last year, according to NAD. The survey results, from the first quarter of 2017, strongly favor the award-winning airport.
A release outlining the survey results pointed out that the cleanliness of the airport's terminals "still tops the list of high scores for LPIA with 4.46". Following closely behind cleanliness is "ease of customers finding their way through the facilities, at 4.40, and courtesy and helpfulness of check-in staff at 4.33".
NAD President & CEO Vernice Walkine pointed out that the survey numbers are "key indicators of the success of investments in systems like automated passport control (APC) in U.S. Customs and the development of new customer service training initiatives".
"We began the American Society for Quality (ASQ) survey six years ago to determine how we ranked regionally and to test how LPIA stacked up against other facilities of a similar passenger size," said Walkine.
D'Aguilar also mentioned yesterday that airlines are looking into, and are happy to increase airlift as the room inventory of New Providence increases, as Baha Mar comes fully on stream.

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