The Bahamas raised fees, lost a winter, cut fees, and got its summer back.

On 1 July 2025 the Bahamas sharply raised cruising fees. The winter that followed, the Association of Bahamas Marinas reported visiting traffic down roughly 40 percent. On 1 April 2026 the government cut the fees. The summer that followed is the measured recovery.

The timeline

July 2025: cruising-permit fees rose steeply, with permit costs doubling or tripling across common sizes and a new levy on charters. Winter 2025 to 2026: the Association of Bahamas Marinas put the drop in visiting traffic at roughly 40 percent, their figure, widely reported. April 2026: the Customs Management (Amendment) Regulations cut the fees, with 30-day permits set at 600 dollars for vessels over 100 feet and 350 dollars for 50 to 100 feet, and anchorage charges waived with a marina stay.

What the water did next

Within a fixed cohort of 4,795 yachts of 30 metres and up holding complete records in both summers, Bahamas yacht-days rose from 6,281 in summer 2025 to 8,040 in summer 2026, a gain of 28 percent. Distinct visiting yachts in the cohort rose 13 percent, from 264 to 299. June alone grew 34 percent year on year, and the Exumas rose from 289 to 345 measured visits.

Why a fixed cohort

Traffik’s measurement coverage grew between the two summers. A naive year-on-year count would flatter the recovery with coverage growth, so this comparison is restricted to the same yachts measured completely in both periods. The recovery is real, not an artifact of better measurement.