Top 3 Takeaways

            The most important thing I learned during our ten-day stay in the Bahamas is the importance of a multi-method approach. Being able to ground your insights and recommendations is really important, and having multiple ways to back them up only grounds your credibility. For example, when my group and I were presenting to the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, we were able to say that we are recommending things based on mystery shopping and peak experience interviews. After doing more research, in our final presentation, we will be able to ground our recommendations in mystery shopping, peak experience interviews, online review analysis, as well as an importance-performance graph.

            My second course takeaway is that change in the Bahamas is a long-time coming. When talking to the Ministry of Tourism, there was one common recommendation in all the groups: service should not be as slow as it is. Because tourism is the Bahamas biggest industry, service should be catered towards the tourists, especially the cruise tourists who make up 70% of the Bahamas visitors and have only a limited time to spend. This means that 2 hour lunches and 4 hour dinners should not be a thing. Unfortunately, the Island is stuck in the past, in a time where having long meals was common. When talking about this with the Ministry, it became apparent that this was not only an issue for the tourists, but for the locals as well. Right now, the Island is run by “baby boomers” who are comfortable in the way things are. It is not until people from Gen X and Y come to power that the Bahamas will experience the change that they need. The Ministry, at least the people that my group talked to, was just as frustrated with the service and the prices as us, and it’s clear that they are itching for change that will not happen for a long time.

            Finally, I learned how tourism truly takes over the Island. Food, especially, is highly influenced by tourism. When going out to restaurants, there was not one that didn’t have American items such as chicken tenders and grilled cheese. I can’t say I’m not guilty of ordering such items during my stay, but it would’ve been nice to see restaurants that have only traditional items on their menu. Sure, there’s the restaurants at the Fish Fry, but even they serve a lot of American food. The restaurants that are traditional, like Bahamian Cookin’ Kitchen, are not advertised to tourists. It was hard to feel like I was having an “authentic” experience when I couldn’t really afford to eat the cultural food and would be forced to get chicken tenders or a burger. Looking back on my culinary experience, I realize how important it is to have all these American foods. With all the tourists coming in, the restaurants need to make sure they have an abundance of familiar items for them to eat.