The president of the Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) said that the once vibrant US Labor Day holiday has been dead for the past 10 years due to insurance costs for hurricane season.
Emanuel Alexiou, not to be confused with The Nassau Guardian’s publisher, told Guardian Business that the business marinas across the country enjoyed 10 years ago for the summer leading into the US Labor Day celebrations has been “dead for the past 10 years”.
“Marinas start [leaving] at the beginning of August because of insurance,” he said.
“Boats have to be out of here. For at least 10 years, there has been a problem.
“Only bigger boats with a captain that can take the boat away from the area well ahead of a hurricane are allowed to cruise here, anybody else has to pay a high price to do so.”
High boat insurance is leaving marinas across the country empty during the summer period, where beforehand marinas used to be busy through to the early part of September, he said. But now, boaters are opting out of the summer experience in The Bahamas and return in mid-November.
“If you are an American, buying insurance in America is tough because the Americans have tightened up on insurance,” he said.
“If you’re in Florida now, you can hardly get house insurance, much less boat insurance. But if you get boat insurance, they tell you that you can’t be in The Bahamas from the beginning of August to the beginning of November
“If you want to be in sail then you are going to have to pay a high premium on your insurance, which is probably high anyway, and a lot of people are opting not to do that.”
Even with charter boats things have become difficult and if those charters aren’t tied into large resorts like Atlantis, then there isn’t much business out there for those marinas either.
“Two things with the bigger charter boats, one, the government has put on some increased costs and value-added tax and different things where the other Caribbean countries don’t do,” Alexiou said.
He continued: “So some of them have decided not to bother with The Bahamas and keep their charter boats here and, of course, Atlantis is probably slower than normal because it is an election year in the US, which is the second thing. You’ve got an election year in the US, so everything is slowing down and slows down every four years or so. So, yes, it is bleak for marinas this year.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-03 00:16:00
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