NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Nassau Airport Development (NAD) company has recorded approximately 8,000 U.S. passenger arrivals in the first three weeks since the borders were reopened.
NAD’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications Jan Knowles told Eyewitness News the figure reflects the period between July 1 and July 22.
She noted domestic activity has been “particularly robust” over the past two days even though Grand Bahama is currently under lockdown and not included in the numbers provided.
“We attribute the numbers to the impending closure of domestic operations today (Tuesday),” said Knowles.
According to Knowles, between July 27 and 28 there were approximately 1,900 domestic arrivals and 1,600 domestic departures.
“As it relates to US passengers, between July 1 and July 22 we welcomed approximately 8,000 US arriving passengers and approximately 7,500 US departures,” she said.
Tourism minister Dionisio D’Aguilar noted yesterday that the government is seeking to discourage travel as the country battles a tremendous surge in COVID-19 cases.
“If you want to go to a family island you’re going to have to quarantine for 14 days,” he said.
“You’re going to have to take a test. We want to discourage travel right now, we want to flatten the number of cases and bring it down, so yes these will be difficult rules to adhere to but the attempt is to discourage travel until we bring the cases under control and then we will review it again.”
