Spain’s Balearia Group made its name moving people, cars and goods from the mainland to Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic islands off the southeast Spanish coast. It grew to serve the Canary Islands, north Africa and the south of France. Then it leapt across the Atlantic in 2011 to Fort Lauderdale to run a fast ferry to Freeport and, as of 2019, Bimini in the Bahamas.
Last year, says Balearia Caribbean managing director Mario Otero, it ferried 122,000 passengers on its Fort Lauderdale-Bahamas runs, a 10% increase from the year before. Its single ship, the 650-passenger Jaume II, makes the crossing to Bimini in about two hours and to Freeport in three. The schedules allow for a day trip, albeit a rushed one.
It sails all year, but its high seasons come in December, March for spring break, and in the summer when it runs five trips to Bimini and three to Freeport each week. Tallies from Port Everglades, the Broward seaport, show that while the most recent fiscal year was Balearia’s best since the pandemic, it still hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In the last fiscal year, the port shows the Jaume II made 28 calls in July, its peak month, with 24 in June and August and at least 20 in December and March. July was the peak for passengers with 16,939.
Otero says more than 60% of passengers are U.S. tourists. The second largest group are Bahamians, many of whom come to Broward to stock up on goods for Mario Otero themselves, their stores or companies.
"We have shown that this transportation model, which is successful in many developed countries around the world, can also be successful in the United States and the Bahamas,” says Otero. He says the 50-employee company wants to grow in the Caribbean.