Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar expressed surprise following the release of the US State Department’s recent travel advisory on The Bahamas,  particularly considering crime here has been trending downwards.

The advisory, which the Minister stressed, is quite similar to the last, urges visitors to exercise increased caution as “violent crimes such as burglaries, armed robberies, and sexual assault are common – even during the day in tourist areas.

The statement  points out that the vast majority of crimes occur in New Providence and Grand Bahama Islands.

The Minister said, “we thought a lot of the verbiage in the advisory was an exaggeration. The Ministry of National Security is looking into exactly how many foreign visitors experience some sort of crime activity or crime incident.

“We feel like it is negligible , so we’re going to push back a little bit.

“We are now dialoguing with the US Embassy. We’re going to push back and we think that even though there may be areas or pockets of crime, the effect on foreign visitors in our country is so negligible that it doesn’t warrant the very strong language that they said in that crime advisory, so conversations will continue,” he said.        

When asked if he expects the advisory to impact the country’s bread and butter industry, he told reporters,  “well it’s exactly the same travel advisory as last year and the number of stop over visitors increased by 17 per cent, so I’ll leave it there,” Minister D’Aguilar said.  

The Bahamas last year enjoyed a banner year with every expectation that the numbers coming out of 2019 will be equally impressive.