Tourist arrivals are expected to take a hit since Hurricane Dorian ransacked Abaco and Grand Bahama leaving behind a trail of devastation. 

Officials project a nearly 10 percent decrease by the end of the year. Still, Minister of Tourism Dionisio D’Aguilar is optimistic visitor arrivals will bounce back and quickly. 

“Our decrease is around 9 percent as suppose to the full 12 percent, so we’re encouraged by that. By early next year, we’re seeing a bit of a rebound so that’s the nature of tourism,” he said.    

“It’s very resilient. It’s subject to a lot of shocks, hurricanes and travel advisories, but short-term memory is very short and it bounces back so we are expecting that to happen.” 

The Ministry of Tourism has since been busy getting the message out that The Bahamas is still open for business, despite the blow to Abaco and Grand Bahama’s economies.

“Just last week, I spent four hours on television stations in the United States, just going from one city to another city in prime-time slots in major cities getting the message out that The Bahamas is open for business, continue to book your holidays and the best way to help is to visit The Bahamas, given our dependency on tourism,” D’Aguilar said.  

Minister D’Aguilar could not say exactly to how much this campaign cost, but that it did require the ministry’s budget to be adjusted.

“I think what we’ve done is we have brought our spend forward. Obviously, we have had it mapped out over the years, but given the urgency of the situation and given the fact that we really wanted to get the message out there that we are open for business, we brought forward a bit of our spend in order to get that message out,”  he said.  

“So, we will adjust, you know how budgets are you adjust here and you adjust there.”