Bahamas Hotel & Tourism Association

A Cabinet minister yesterday warned new US quarantine requirements are “simply devastating” for the Bahamian tourism industry’s rebound, adding: “This keeps us on the edge that much longer.”

The hotel union's president has voiced alarm that "the deck's being stacked against" the revival of the Bahamian tourism industry and wider economy by travel restrictions imposed in its major markets.

The Bahamas is pushing "to be at the front of the queue" should the US introduce exemptions from its new COVID-19 testing policy that threatens to be "a significant deterrent" to tourism.

Dionisio D'Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, told Tribune Business that this country and the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean were moving rapidly to make the case to US authorities that any exemption from tightened pandemic enforcement "should be offered to us" first as a region.

Bahamian hotel executives yesterday said the tourism industry has "lost a giant of a man" after Sandals founder, Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, died in hospital aged 79.

“The world has lost a giant of a man; the tourism industry has lost a visionary. More than any other individual, Butch has influenced the trajectory of tourism in the entire region,” said Robert Sands, the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association's (BHTA) president. “His contribution to The Bahamas cannot be defined in mere dollar value; he set the bar for excellence, and he inspired us to exceed it.”