MOT, NAS And BNT Partner For World-Class Bird Watching Training Workshop

 The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism (BMOT), the National Audubon Society (NAS) and the Bahamas National Trust (BNT) recently held a special bird watching training workshop in Central Andros to help train persons looking to get involved in this new, lucrative niche market.

The $2.6 billion project – funded by the Inter-American Development Bank – partners with local NGOs in Belize, The Bahamas, Guatemala and Paraguay to utilise the bird-watching market to create sustainable jobs in communities while simultaneously protecting biodiversity and natural resources.  

 According to officials, The Bahamas has the perfect sites for bird watching to take advantage of the $82 billion industry, which is growing at approximately eight per cent a year with an expenditure of $17 billion.

Director of Industry Training in the Ministry of Tourism Ian Ferguson said MOT is extremely excited to be a part of the programme.

“I believe the Ministry of Tourism and the Industry Training Department’s role in particular is ultimately to prepare Bahamians and persons living in The Bahamas to be more equipped to serve and deliver impactful tours and experiences for our visitors,” he said.

  “We are always looking for new and expanding ways to enhance the product of The Bahamas in our vertical and emerging markets. Bird watching is a fairly new one for The Bahamas though in some pockets in our society it has been done for some time.  I believe on this large scale this is new and breaking ground for us.

“Our responsibility is to ensure that the quality is extremely high because the truth is most of the emerging markets along the side of eco-tourism – the standards must be extremely high because the caliber of persons coming to experience this kind of experience is one that is expecting a great deal of technical competence.”

Mr. Ferguson said that the programme is ongoing and all tour guides participating will be BahamaHost certified.

Additionally they will get an entrepreneurship certification.

“So many of them are going to want to become sole proprietors and they are going to be serving the industry and so if we can provide them with those basic and technical skills to that with some level of proficiency, we think we would have done our job well,” he said.

 “When persons go to engage in bird watching in Australia, we’re hoping they come back to The Bahamas because we have done it better than anyone else.”

Officials are expected to hold another workshop in Inagua.

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