By VERNON CLEMENT JONES,Guardian Business Editor,vernon@nasguard.com

Sandals Bahamas has taken the extraordinary step of hosting, and indeed paying for, 1,000-plus travel agents to give the resort and the destination in general the once-over this year — its hope being they'll recommend both to travelers increasingly confined to home because of the economy.

"Sandals Royal Bahamian as a resort is highly proactive in driving visitors to the resort and keeping the country's tourism buoyant," Sales director Andre Newbold told Guardian Business Thursday. "In terms of numbers, we welcome over 100 agents each month."

It's a strategy focused on offering two and three day familiarization trips — what the industry calls 'fam trips' — to travel agents worldwide. The program falls largely outside of similar ones sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and industry promotion boards.

"We regularly conduct 'Walking Workshop' familiarization trips where we invite retail agents from around the world to visit our property and experience our resorts firsthand so that they can then go back to their respective markets and agencies and sell more effectively," said Newbold. "For example, in the next two weeks alone we are hosting groups from the American Express retail division and the top producers, Liberty Travel."

Both present the resort with the potential to better tap into their established and respective customer base. Sandals isn't pegging a dollar amount to that program, which wines, dines and houses frontline as well as executive members of the industry. Still, it's a figure that likely stretches into the tens of thousands of dollars, even if those agents take up rooms that are increasingly unoccupied by actual paying tourists.

The associated costs may in fact be well worth it.

While the most recent Tourism numbers point to an overall visitor decline of some 10 percent last July relative to the 2007 period, stopover tourists first touching down in Nassau actually grew. It speaks to the real opportunity to convince Americans and Canadians, in particular, to give The Bahamas and, in Newbold's case, Sandals a try. While many are now booking their own travel plans via the Internet, new U.S. data points to the increasing demand for travel agent expertise — likely a desire to save money in a recessionary economy. So, it's simple: If Newbold can win over agents, he'll likely win over their clients.

It's a long-standing and guiding premise most resort destinations rely on, although not all are as well equipped to foot the bill for those initiatives.

In this market, smaller properties, for example, are simply outgunned in that fight to shore up future occupancy rates with today's fam trips.

Sandals, given its network of properties in Jamaica and the Turks & Caicos, seems especially well positioned to win that battle.

"Sales Director of Sandals Royal Bahamian Bob Keesler, the resort's General Manager, recently spent a week in the United States promoting Sandals Royal Bahamian as a resort and The Bahamas as a destination to travel agents," said Newbold.

It's that last bit of his promotional patter that may help those same smaller hotels and inns in Nassau protect their own faltering occupancy rates, now under attack by the world's economic woes.