Covid-19 Guide for Travel to the Bahamas

Last week I gave an overview of what it is like to travel during the Covid-19 pandemic. My first international trip since the pandemic hit was to the Bahamas. The Bahamas is one of my family’s favorite destinations and we thought it would be a great place to go and feel safe. If you decide to go to the Bahamas soon, I hope this is can serve as a guide for what you need to know for all things Covid.

Travel Health Visa

The government of the Bahamas requires that all international travelers apply for a Bahamas Travel Health visa. In order to apply for this visa, travelers must obtain a negative Covid-19 PCR swab test no more than five days prior to the date of arrival. You then upload the negative test result onto the travel visa website and fill out the visa application. There is a minimal cost for the application and it is dependent on your length of stay. The visa application takes up to 24 hours to process. You will then need a copy of the visa in order to check in to your flight as well as to get through Border Control in the Bahamas airport.

Our experience with this was pretty stressful. There were five of us trying to get covid tests in five different ways. I ended up getting two tests done because I was worried about the results taking too long to come in. Filling out the application was easy, but when it was past the 24 hour timeline I started getting nervous. All I had to do was email the website though, and it quickly got approved.

Arriving to the Bahamas

Prior to checking in to our flight, we had to show the airline our travel health visa. This was a fairly quick process but definitely added time to the check in time.

The whole fam!

Arrival at the Nassau airport was simple and painless - we had to do a temperature check and then go to border patrol and customs where we had to show the travel health visa.

Arriving to Our Hotel

We stayed at the Baha Mar resort, which was amazing. There was a hotel employee waiting at the door to greet us and escort us to a room where we would take our rapid Covid-19 test. The testing was quick and painless (probably the most gentle test I’ve had since Covid-19 started!). After we were all tested, another hotel employee escorted us to our hotel rooms where we had to stay until our results came back. This was probably the most annoying part. The hotel employee put us in our room and didn’t give us our room key. We had to sit there and wait after a long travel day. We were all starving and cranky and ready to get our vacation started. We had to wait roughly one hour before another hotel employee came back with our room keys and we were free! Our negative results were then emailed to us.

You also needed a negative rapid test in order to get back into the US. Thankfully, the hotel provided this for us and it was a quick process to do.

Traveling Around the Island

We only left our resort once while in the Bahamas to go to dinner at the Atlantis Paradise Island resort. We took a cab there and we dropped off outside of the hotel entrance. The security guard would not let us on the property without showing our negative test results from when we arrived to the Bahamas. I recommend taking a screenshot of the results to have in case you do not use cellular data while traveling.

And Enjoy!

Covid-19 restrictions in the Bahamas were very similar to NY/NJ restrictions. We had to wear masks when walking around the resort and they had limited seating at restaurants and casino tables. None of the restrictions took away from our vacation though and we had a blast!

Overall, the experience was fairly easy, however I don’t think it is worth it if you plan on going to the Bahamas for less than four nights. There are a lot of hoops to jump through and you will lose a whole day due to travel and Covid-19 testing.

Hope this has been helpful!

xoxo -Kim