The Bahamas: Beautiful Islands, Amazing Water, and Plenty of Space for Social Distancing

March 3, 2021 Jim Byers

Sixteen unique destinations, spread across 100,000 square kilometers of open ocean. If you’re talking about ideal vacations for social distancing, you’d have to put the Bahamas near the top of the list.

Only a short, three-hour flight from Toronto, the Bahamas are perfectly poised for what looks like a coming tourism and travel rebound,

Top officials from Bahamas Tourism staged a virtual Romance Travel session for media and agents on Wednesday, with lots of talk about romantic wedding spots and brilliant honeymoon properties.

“The Bahamas are perfect for social distancing,” Paul Strachan, Bahamas Tourism’s Director, Canada, told Canadian Travel News. “We’re seeing an increased demand for buyouts of small resorts as well as villas and rental properties on those outer islands.”

I’ve been lucky enough to visit Nassau, which I love, but also Eleuthera, which is 180 km’s long and maybe a couple of km’s wide, and Long Island, which is 130 km’s long and no wider than 6 km at its widest point. Both are utterly charming, and perfect for getting away from it all. Of the two, Long Island is considerably more remote and quieter, but they’re both marvellous.

“We have the whole mix, the whole gamut,” said Ellison “Tommy” Thompson, Deputy Director General of Bahamas Tourism. “One of the things that’s really growing is the luxury yacht experience. What they like is you can come into the Bahamas and go to all these islands without needing more tests or going through customs in several countries. The islands stretch for 750 miles and we have 100,00 square kilometers of open ocean. And you have to go far and wide to beat the clarity of Bahamian waters. We also have some of the best fly fishing in the world.”

“From the research we’ve done the demand is definitely there,” Thompson said. “People are looking forward to getting back to travelling, and the Bahamas is perfectly suited for that getaway. People want to go to a place that’s not too far from home, that is kind of familiar. English-speaking is quite a plus as well. Those things bode quite well for the Bahamas. And I think the COVID numbers, the way we’ve managed the pandemic, has been pretty robust. I think we’ve had a 60% decrease since July.

“We’re close and we’re safe, and those are the key messages we’re going to drive home to drive sales in the very short term,” Strachan said. “A lot of people took three to four day trips because it’s only a short flight. The way we position it is, sometimes it takes three to four hours to drive up to cottage country from Toronto.”

Thompson said travel is permitted into the Bahamas, but that anyone arriving in the Bahamas needs to have a negative PCR test, and that they need to upload that to the Bahamas Health Visa site five days before arrival.

“Once you have that then access to the Bahamas is quite easy. Each day you’re in the Bahamas up to day five you have to complete a questionnaire to see if you have any symptoms. If you’re here more than five days, you have to take a rapid antigen test to stay in the Bahamas,” Thompson said. “But if you’re leaving on day five or day four there’s no need for a second test, unless you need it get back into Canada,” which you definitely would.

“We are very very pleased at the moment as our numbers are quite manageable. We had a surge back in July of last year, but it’s abated,” Thompson said. “Right now, on average we probably get 10-12 cases a day. (Online COVID-19 statistics show 21,663 cases per one million population in the Bahamas and 457 deaths per one million population, which is better than Canada (23,039 cases per million, 582 deaths per million.)

“Coming into the Bahamas we’re making sure protocols are very much in place. We work very closely with the private sector, the Ministry of Tourism and the private sector, to put together guidelines that guide the visitor from their arrival at the airport to when they depart again.

“Between the ministry of tourism, the hotel sector, excursion sector and the shops and what have you, everyone contributed. Every touch point that a visitor would go through has been carefully mapped out to make sure that visitors are protected, and also the Bahamians working in the sector are protected as well.”

Thompson said that losing all flights from Canada from until April 30 was quite a blow. He also noted that the only flights from Europe to the Bahamas went through Toronto, so the Canadian flight ban was a double whammy.

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