Bonaire after ten years of tourism policy: Why the Strategic Tourism Master Plan zeroed in on the American market
KRALENDIJK - The United States were given a notably prominent place in the Strategic Tourism Master Plan (STMP) of 2017. This was no coincidence, nor was it purely a marketing decision. Behind that choice lay a broader economic rationale. The central question of the plan was not how Bonaire could attract more tourists, but how the island could extract more economic value from tourism without the pressure on nature and society increasing at the same pace.
From growth figures to revenue
That question connects directly to the central idea from the first part of this series. The STMP was not a classic growth plan in which higher visitor numbers defined success. The ambition was precisely to grow the economic value of tourism faster than the societal pressure that same tourism creates. The focus was not on the number of visitors, but on the value each visitor represented for Bonaire. The plan described this as the development towards a high-quality destination, based on high value tourism.
This philosophy is explicitly articulated in the STMP. Its authors write that Bonaire opts for “measured growth”, where gradual increases in visitor numbers are acceptable as long as they lead to “higher tourist receipts”. In other words: the goal was not more tourists, but higher economic returns per visitor, so that the quality of life for residents could improve without Bonaire growing into a mass tourism destination.
The plan notes that hotel guests spend considerably more on average than visitors staying with friends or family. It therefore proposes expanding the supply of four-star boutique hotels and attracting more visitors willing to pay a premium for quality and experience. The authors assume that this combination leads not only to higher tourism spending, but also to a greater economic spin-off for the broader economy. The goal is not to attract as many tourists as possible, but to achieve higher economic returns through controlled growth in visitor numbers.
Why North America enters the picture
The next question is which markets best align with that strategy. The STMP identifies the Dutch market, the North American market, and the region as the most important growth markets. In each case, the same condition applies: investments in marketing, collaboration with airlines, and route development must be guided by the expected return on investment and must fit within the development of Bonaire as a high-quality destination. Here too, the economic objective is central; the choice of specific source markets is derived from it, not the other way around.
In retrospect, the emphasis on the American market is regularly described as a choice for a specific source market. The policy documents themselves, however, reveal a different sequence. The United States were not the starting point of the strategy, the economic objective was: achieving greater economic returns with moderate growth in visitor numbers. The choice of North America in the STMP flows from that reasoning, not the other way around.
Notably, a comparable economic rationale reappears eight years later in the Economic Impact Study conducted by Economisch Bureau Amsterdam in 2025 on behalf of BONHATA. The researchers write that Bonaire can achieve economic growth by making better use of existing hotel capacity, attracting more affluent visitors, or focusing more strongly on the North American market. According to the study, this can yield moderate economic growth while keeping the additional pressure on the island’s carrying capacity limited.
This does not mean that the Economic Impact Study evaluates or confirms the STMP. What is striking, however, is that both documents, produced eight years apart and with different mandates, follow a comparable economic rationale on this point. Where the STMP introduced this thinking as a policy strategy, the Economic Impact Study describes the same approach as one of the possible development paths for Bonaire.
What the figures show
The underlying figures make clear why the North American market specifically comes into focus. On average, a staying tourist from North America spends approximately US$2,673 during their visit to Bonaire, compared to US$2,450 for a visitor from the European Netherlands. On its own, that difference of just over nine percent may seem modest. But behind those figures lies an important distinction. Dutch visitors stay an average of twelve nights on Bonaire, while North American tourists depart after an average of 8.2 nights. Converted to spending per holiday day, a North American visitor amounts to approximately US$326 per day, compared to approximately US$204 for a Dutch visitor. Average daily spending is thus roughly sixty percent higher. Moreover, North American visitors more frequently stay in hotels or resorts, precisely the accommodation segment on which the STMP largely based its strategy.
This does not mean that one tourist is more important than another. Dutch visitors have formed a stable pillar of Bonaire’s tourism for decades and stay considerably longer on the island on average. The question the STMP sought to answer was, however, a different one. If Bonaire wanted to increase its economic returns without a proportional rise in visitor numbers, which markets offered the greatest opportunities?
From that perspective, later discussions about air connections, hotel development, and international marketing take on a different meaning. They were not the starting point of the policy, but a consequence of it. The emphasis on the American market did not stem from a preference for one country, but from a broader economic strategy in which higher spending per visitor was central. In the policy logic of the STMP, the American market was not an end in itself, but an instrument to bring the plan’s central ambition closer: creating more economic value without the growth of tourism automatically leading to an equally large increase in pressure on nature, infrastructure, and society.
Yet this still leaves the most important question unanswered. A policy choice can be sound on paper without actually being realised in practice. Ten years after the presentation of the STMP, a further question therefore presents itself: did Bonaire ultimately succeed in binding the American market more strongly to the island?
Almost ten years after the tourism master plan: did Bonaire grow the way it wanted to grow?
