(CMR) The Bahamian government is refusing to incentivize cruise ship companies to dock there according to the Minister of Tourism Dionisio D’Aguilar. D’Aguilar complained that the government was paying out $12 million a year to provide incentives for cruise ships to bring passengers to The Bahamas, but passengers were not coming off the ships and spending money.
The announcement was made yesterday by the Minister when he said:
“In the past we used to provide incentives for cruise passengers to come here; but to be quite honest with you, we were paying for a lot of people who didn’t come off the boat. So we scrapped all those incentives, we don’t have any incentives anymore; we’re not paying any cruise line to bring any passengers here,”
“I think they amounted to about $12 million a year, about $1 million a month, but over the years we have done away with most of the cruise ships and there was one cruise ship company that was left up to June 30, and so we decided to sit back, wait and see if it makes a difference and then review it, but it is not our intention at this time to offer incentives,” he said.
“The cruise companies are very, very profitable; they make a lot of money. Why are we paying them to bring cruise passengers to our port and then we’re finding that some of them are not coming off? So why are we giving incentives for people to come to Nassau and sit on the boat, eat their food and not spend money in our country?”
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