by Brian Major
Last updated: 12:20 PM ET, Tue July 9, 2024
Nassau Cruise Port will build a $35 million water park at
the $330 million facility, which opened last year, Mike Maura, the cruise port’s
CEO, said Monday in local news reports.
The facility has no confirmed construction start date for the water park, but the approval process is “well underway,” and a building permit has been secured, Maura said in a Bahamas Tribune report.
The water park will be positioned behind the property’s amphitheater on its western side and will also feature new food and beverage outlets. Port officials have cleared a site for the water park but have not started construction, said Maura, who expects the project to be completed toward the end of 2025.
Cruise ship visitors are by far the Bahamas’ primary
visitor source, climbing nearly 50 percent in 2023 to 7,934,858 visitors, up
from the 5,530,462 cruise vacationers who visited in 2022. Maura called the Nassau
Cruise Port “the largest tourism gateway in The Bahamas.”
The Nassau Cruise Port has hosted “approximately 800,000
more cruise passenger arrivals than the same period in 2019” in the first six months
of this year, and more than 500,000 over 2023 during the same period, Maura
said.
The first week in July benefited from five additional
cruise ship calls carrying 15,000 passengers as cruise operators diverted vessels
to avoid Hurricane Beryl’s passage, added Maura.
The downtown water park will give visitors “something to do”
that is family oriented and recreational, Maura said. The Cruise Port is viewed
by Bahamas tourism leaders as integral to a revitalization of the
district extending from Bay Street.
The water park project comes as Royal Caribbean prepares a site on western Paradise Island for its Royal
Beach Club project, which Maura said will accommodate up to 2,700 persons daily.
He said that with 30,000 people arriving daily aboard cruise ships in the Bahamas, visitors need multiple activity options once they are ashore.
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