The master plan pointed in the right direction, but Bonaire blinked at the critical moment
Part 3 in the series on ten years of Strategic Tourism Policy on Bonaire
When Tourism Corporation Bonaire presented the Strategic Tourism Master Plan in 2017, the focus was not on attracting as many additional tourists as possible. The plan’s authors deliberately chose a different economic approach. Bonaire was to develop into a high-quality destination where visitors spend more on average, stay in hotels more frequently, and thereby add greater economic value, without the island needing to pursue the same growth figures as many other Caribbean destinations.
To achieve this, a targeted expansion of the Dutch, North American, and regional markets was chosen, supported by new air connections, focused marketing, and improvements to the quality of the hotel offering. The plan projected growth from approximately 140,000 to 200,000 overnight tourists over a ten-year period.
Nine years on, it turns out that a significant part of those assumptions has come remarkably close to reality. Bonaire received nearly 199,000 overnight tourists in 2025, virtually meeting the volume target the master plan once set. At the same time, the North American market grew considerably stronger than in the years preceding the plan. The United States gradually became an increasingly important source market — exactly as the plan’s authors had envisioned.
Almost ten years after the tourism master plan: did Bonaire grow the way it wanted to grow?
JetBlue as a turning point
That debate came to a head after the departure of JetBlue. The airline launched direct flights between New York JFK and Bonaire in 2024, seemingly delivering on one of the key recommendations of the Strategic Tourism Master Plan: improving accessibility from the United States. Yet before the route had a chance to fully mature, it was discontinued in early 2026.
Opinions on the cause diverged. According to the Public Entity Bonaire, the Minimum Revenue Guarantee ultimately proved financially unsustainable. Compensating for operating losses over the long term could cost the community millions of dollars. BONHATA emphasised a different explanation, arguing that the route never received the sustained marketing support needed to permanently establish Bonaire as a destination in the American market. The discussion quickly shifted from one air connection to a more fundamental question: how much is Bonaire willing to invest in actually executing its own tourism strategy?
That question cuts to the heart of the Strategic Tourism Master Plan. The choice for the North American market was not made in isolation. The plan described better air connections, targeted marketing, a high-quality hotel stock, and product development as components of one coherent strategy. Only when those elements were developed simultaneously could Bonaire, according to the plan’s authors, attract more visitors who spend above average and use hotels more frequently.
The economic case holds up
That premise is broadly confirmed by the Economic Impact Study published in 2025. The research shows that North American overnight tourists spent an average of $2,673 per visit in 2024, slightly more than visitors from European Netherlands. They also stayed in hotels or resorts more frequently and combined a relatively short stay with higher daily spending. The researchers conclude that Bonaire can increase its economic returns by attracting proportionally more North American visitors, without necessarily needing more tourist overnight stays.
This is precisely what makes the developments of recent years so significant. The analysis underpinning the Strategic Tourism Master Plan in 2017 appears to hold up remarkably well. The recent economic study confirms that the economic value of tourism is not determined solely by visitor numbers, but also by spending patterns, the type of accommodation guests use, and the contribution they make to the local economy. In that sense, both documents appear to reinforce rather than contradict each other.
The market shifted, but not enough
At the same time, practice shows that the execution of that strategy was less straightforward. While the number of overnight tourists grew by around 42 percent between 2017 and 2024, available accommodation capacity increased by around 62 percent over the same period. A significant portion of that expansion took place outside the traditional hotel sector, in apartments, villas, and other forms of short-term rental. The growth of the North American market therefore coincided with a much broader expansion of the tourism supply than the master plan had originally envisioned.
The Dutch market, despite the strong growth of the United States and Canada, also remained by far the largest source market. The shift the Strategic Tourism Master Plan aimed for did get under way, but did not lead to a fundamental change in the composition of overnight tourism. The American market became more important, without truly displacing the dominant position of the Netherlands.
This also puts the JetBlue debate in better perspective. The disappearance of one air connection says little in itself about the success or failure of overall tourism policy. What it does reveal is how vulnerable a long-term strategy can be when one of its essential conditions comes under pressure. Choosing a high-quality tourism market means committing to sustained investment in accessibility, marketing, and product development. It was precisely on this point that government and the tourism sector reached different conclusions in recent years.
Nine years on: the analysis survives, the execution does not
Nine years after the Strategic Tourism Master Plan was published, what appears to be under scrutiny is not so much the analysis, but its implementation. Both the master plan and the Economic Impact Study point in the same direction: economic growth need not come solely from more visitors, but can also come from visitors who spend more and better match the profile Bonaire has in mind. At the same time, the Economic Impact Study stresses that further development can only be sustainable when economic growth goes hand in hand with the protection of nature, quality of life, and cultural heritage.
The question that remains after nine years is therefore not whether the choice for the American market was a logical one. The available data rather point towards a confirmation of that strategy. The more interesting question is whether Bonaire will succeed in continuing to create the conditions needed to sustain that course over the long term.
That is precisely where it will become clear whether the Strategic Tourism Master Plan was not only a compelling analysis, but also an executable strategy.
