Chief Executive Officer of the Nassau Paradise Island Tourism Promotion Board, Joy Jibrilu recently appeared on The Rundown talk show host by Clint Watson where she spoke about hotel occupancy numbers and room inventory.

She said, “even as we saw Baha Mar opened up, post COVID Melia has closed, Beach Towers has closed and so the inventory that we had, even six years ago, is suddenly smaller now. British Colonial only opened last year so we even lost their 260 rooms. So that’s over a thousand rooms just with those hotels that are gone from the inventory. And so yes, if we want to be competitive with the big boys, the big players in the region, who are growing exponentially in terms of developing hotel rooms we have to look at that. I said two prongs, I think there are three sort of things that we have to look at. We do though have to look at our current occupancy rate.”

According to Jibrilu, SpaceX is a great start to increased occupancy numbers. “I think that speaks to what some of the solutions are. You’re always gonna have people who are going to be concerned about weather so September it’s weather related, it’s back to school. I think our hotel partners and all have us collectively are doing a much better job at trying to attract that group business, that conference business. People always why do you put so much effort behind that and it’s because the low seasons are when they are interested in coming. Hotel rates are a little bit lower, our hotel partners are excited to have them and so it’s better all around. It’s a win win situation for everyone.”