Travel in the Bahamas: cruise ships, mail boats and the Out Islands

How most visitors arrive and how few stay

Most visitors to the Bahamas never spend a night on land. The Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation counted 12.5 million arrivals in 2025, and 86.5% came by sea, overwhelmingly on cruise ships. Stopover visitors, the ones who stay on land, numbered more than 1.8 million, and about 1.7 million foreign visitors came by air. The Wikipedia tourism article gives 7.8 million cruise passengers in 2023 and puts the number of cruise ports across the islands at about ten.

For a cruise passenger the Bahamas is usually Nassau for a day, or at an Out Island port; the Ministry reported that Bimini and the Berry Islands expanded their roles as cruise destinations in 2025. For a stopover visitor the choice is between Nassau and Paradise Island, where about two-thirds stayed in 2025, and the Out Islands, which took nearly 30%. The Ministry markets 16 island destinations.

The visitors come overwhelmingly from North America. The IMF put the share of tourist inflows from the United States at around 80% in December 2025, and the Wikipedia tourism article gives about 85% of international visitors. Grand Bahama lies about 100 kilometres off Florida, and Canada was the one market the Ministry singled out in 2025 as having passed its pre-pandemic level of stopover arrivals.

What entry to the Bahamas requires

Every visitor needs a passport. Nationals of countries without visa-free access need an electronic visa, and the Wikipedia tourism article notes that arriving by cruise ship does not exempt them; holders of a United States green card or a Canadian immigration record are exempt. On arrival at Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau, visitors clear Bahamas Immigration, collect their luggage and then clear Bahamas Customs.

The airport is also a border post for the United States. Its US Customs and Border Protection preclearance facility lets passengers bound for the United States complete American customs and immigration in Nassau before they board, Passengers returning from the Out Islands for a US flight move to the separate US departures terminal to check in and clear preclearance, and those going elsewhere stay in the international terminal.

The practical record is short. Traffic drives on the left. The currency is the Bahamian dollar, held at par with the US dollar, and US currency is accepted throughout the islands. Mains electricity is 120 volts, with NEMA 1-15 and 5-15 plugs. The whole country keeps one clock, the Nassau zone, at UTC minus five hours in winter and minus four in summer.

How to get between the islands

Distance is the defining fact of travel here. The chain runs more than 800 kilometres from Grand Bahama to Great Inagua, and most routes run through Nassau. The country has 61 airports in the Wikipedia count; international flights land at Nassau, at Grand Bahama International on Grand Bahama and at Leonard M. Thompson International on Abaco, and Britannica adds Exuma to the international list. Flights to the Out Islands leave from Nassau's domestic terminal, a short walk from the international one, and the Out Islands' tourism site advises allowing at least two and a half hours in Nassau to connect.

By sea there are three kinds of service. Bahamas Ferries runs from Nassau to the Abacos, Andros, the Exumas, Eleuthera and Harbour Island, Spanish Wells, Freeport and Long Island. The mail boats, a fleet of small motor vessels that Britannica describes as carrying passengers and freight as well as the mail between Nassau and the Out Islands, are the older network and still sail on regular schedules. Inside each island group the short hops are made by local ferry or water taxi: across the harbour between North Eleuthera, Harbour Island and Spanish Wells, around North and South Bimini, and across the gap between Crown Haven on Abaco and McLean's Town on Grand Bahama.

Paved roads cover Nassau, Freeport and most inhabited islands, about 1,620 kilometres in all. The IMF's December 2025 statement expected airport upgrades and new hotel and cruise projects to ease the capacity limits the industry had reached.

When the weather favours a visit

The seasons are the ones the geography article describes. The dry season, from November to April, brings northeast trade winds and clear skies, with daytime highs around 25 °C, with the occasional cold front from North America; the wet season, from May to October, is hotter and more humid, with highs around 31 °C and short, heavy thunderstorms. Britannica gives average temperatures of about 21 °C in winter and 27 °C in summer.

The hurricane season runs officially from June to November, and most hurricanes that reach the Bahamas arrive between July and October. Hurricane Dorian struck Abaco and Grand Bahama in September 2019. In 2025 Abaco recorded its highest visitor total on record, just under 520,000, and Grand Bahama passed one million arrivals for the first time in more than 22 years, both by the Ministry's count.

The islands' own calendar is its own reason to come at a particular time. Junkanoo fills Bay Street in Nassau in the early hours of Boxing Day and New Year's Day, and the government's Junkanoo page notes that visitors can arrange through their hotels to join a group. Almost every inhabited island holds a regatta or fishing tournament each year, and settlements hold food festivals such as the Pineapple Fest at Gregory Town and the Crab Fest on Andros.

What there is to see in Nassau

Nassau is where the country's history is densest. The Queen's Staircase, 66 steps cut by hand by enslaved people between 1793 and 1794, climbs to Fort Fincastle on Bennet's Hill, which also served as a lighthouse. Arawak Cay, an artificial island, is known for its fish fry restaurants. Bay Street, the commercial street of the old town, is the route of the Junkanoo parades, and winning costumes are kept on show in a Junkanoo museum in the city. The Straw Market sells plaited straw work and wood carving, and the National Art Gallery occupies a mansion overlooking the harbour.

Paradise Island holds the Atlantis resort, with five hotels, lagoons, a casino and a water park, and Cable Beach and Junkanoo Beach lie along the New Providence shore. The government's Junkanoo page notes that visitors outside the holiday season can see Junkanoo performed in summer at various hotels.

Where the country's history can be seen

Much of the history in the history article has a place attached to it. In Nassau, Fort Montague dates from 1741 and Fort Fincastle stands above the Queen's Staircase; the Bahamas Historical Society runs a museum in the city, and the Department of Archives keeps the colony's records open to the public.

Outside the capital the sites are settlements more than monuments. Harbour Island and Spanish Wells are the communities the Eleutheran Adventurers founded after their ship was wrecked on the reef north of Eleuthera in 1648. Red Bays, in north-west Andros, was settled by Black Seminoles and people who escaped slavery in Florida in the 1820s, and its basket-makers keep their own tradition. Freeport, on Grand Bahama, is a town planned from 1955 under a single contract, and the Grand Bahama Museum tells its story.

What visitors eat

Bahamian cooking is built on the sea, and the dishes Britannica names as national ones are the ones visitors meet first. Conch comes as a salad or cracked and fried, fish is fried or steamed, peas and rice goes with most plates, and the usual dessert is guava duff, fruit boiled in dough with a butter sauce. Spiny lobster, which Bahamians call crayfish, is the other catch on the menu. The fish fry restaurants at Arawak Cay in Nassau are where many visitors try them, and settlements hold festivals around their own food: the Pineapple Fest at Gregory Town on Eleuthera and the Crab Fest on Andros among them.

English is the official language, and what visitors hear in the street is Bahamian dialect, which runs from standard English to an English-based creole. Haitian Creole is spoken in Haitian communities.

What the Out Islands offer that Nassau does not

The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park covers 176 square miles of land and sea and has been protected since 1958 by the Bahamas National Trust's dating, or 1959 by Britannica's. The Trust describes it as a boating destination with safe anchorages that receives thousands of boaters a year, with hiking trails and boardwalks ashore; wardens and Defence Force officers stationed at Warderick Wells patrol it, and fishing, shelling and taking conch are banned inside it. It received the Platinum Global Ocean Refuge Award in 2018. The Trust lists 33 national parks in all. Also in the Exumas is the beach where feral pigs live, whose origin, the Wikipedia tourism article notes, is unknown.

Andros, about 6,000 square kilometres, has the Andros Barrier Reef, more than 124 miles long and reachable only by boat, where stingrays, sea turtles, dolphins and sharks are seen, and the blue holes of its karst. Grand Bahama has Lucayan National Park and its underwater caves, and Freeport, built under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement of 1955. Great Inagua has Inagua National Park and its flamingo colony, which the Trust's account put at more than 60,000 birds when read in 2026.

Eleuthera, Harbour Island and Spanish Wells, where the first English settlers landed in 1648, are linked by daily ferries, and the Ministry reported nearly 30% growth in arrivals to Eleuthera in 2025. San Salvador is the island Samuel Eliot Morison identified with Columbus's landfall of 12 October 1492, a claim others make for Samana Cay and Cat Island. Cat Island has Mount Alvernia, at 63 metres the highest point in the country. The Bimini group, 23 square kilometres of land that nowhere rises above 6 metres, and the Berry Islands have grown as cruise calls, the Ministry reported in 2025, while Great Inagua, at the far south-eastern end of the chain about 80 kilometres from Cuba, holds the flamingo colony of Inagua National Park. Abaco's airport, Leonard M. Thompson International, was formerly Marsh Harbour Airport.

What divers and sailors come to find

Britannica lists what draws people into the water: coral reefs with sharks, rays and moray eels, and the shipwrecks left by the shallow banks and by the pirates who used the islands in the early 18th century. Snorkelling, windsurfing, deep-sea fishing and sailing are the other water sports it names, and it notes stretches of deserted beach behind reef-protected water.

The Ministry reported in 2025 that nearly 30% of stopover visitors went beyond Nassau and Paradise Island, a share it presented as spreading the income from tourism across more communities. Air arrivals to Grand Bahama rose 20% on 2024, which the Ministry credited to new airline service.