Is Exuma Safer Than Nassau?
The advisory, the 2025 police figures and the population difference behind them, then what all of it means for a guided day tour out of Nassau.
This question gets asked often enough that ChatGPT tracks it as a standing query, and the honest answer needs two things most articles skip: what the advisory actually covers, and what the police numbers actually count. Both point the same way, and neither says what the alarmist version or the defensive version claims.
Is Exuma safer than Nassau?
On the recorded figures, yes, but the gap is mostly a difference in population and density rather than a difference in how a visitor is treated. The travel advisory applies to the whole country at one level, and the crime it describes is concentrated in Nassau and Freeport, which are where nearly everyone lives and lands. The Exumas are quieter because they are small and thinly populated.
That is the statistical answer. The practical answer, for someone deciding whether to book a half-day boat trip out of Nassau, is different again, and it comes at the end of this page.
What does the US travel advisory actually say?
The Bahamas sits at Level 2, Exercise Increased Caution, updated 28 July 2026, and that level applies to the entire country rather than to one island. Exuma is not carved out as safer and Nassau is not carved out as worse. Within that single level, the text does get specific about geography.
The US State Department advisory states that most crime occurs in Nassau and Freeport, and names the "Over the Hill" area of Nassau, south of Shirley Street, as the place to stay alert. It also flags something more relevant to a beach day than to a walk downtown: the water-sports rental industry is poorly regulated, boating accidents are frequent, particularly on jet skis, and there have been reported sexual assaults by jet-ski operators. The UK FCDO advice covers similar ground, and Canada's guidance sits at exercise a high degree of caution.
What do the police figures show?
Royal Bahamas Police Force figures for 2025 show major crimes down 15% to 2,409, crimes against people down 27% to 509, and homicides down 31% to 83. New Providence, the island Nassau sits on, accounted for 76 of those 83 murders and 157 of the 162 armed robberies. That concentration is the number people are really asking about.
Read it carefully and two things follow. The first is that the direction of travel is down, sharply, across every category the Royal Bahamas Police Force publishes. The second is that the remaining seven homicides and five armed robberies were spread across every other island in the country, Grand Bahama included, so the Exumas' share of the national total is very small. That is a real difference. It is also exactly what you would expect from a scattered chain of small cays compared with the capital.
Recommended tours from Nassau
Nassau 3 Islands Tour with Snorkeling, Pig Beach, Turtles & Lunch
Four-hour crewed speedboat day from Nassau: snorkeling, pig beach, turtles and lunch.
Nassau Cultural Trolley Tour – Historic Sites & Bahamian Vibes
Two-hour guided trolley through downtown Nassau and the historic sites.
Swimming Pigs & Private Beach Club Escape from Nassau
Four-hour boat day from Nassau with a pig-beach stop and a private beach club.
Rose Island Full-Day Adventure from Nassau – Snorkel, Turtles & Private Beach
Four hours from Nassau for snorkeling, turtles and time on a private beach.
| Compared on | Nassau, New Providence | The Exumas |
|---|---|---|
| Advisory level | Level 2, Exercise Increased Caution, country-wide | The same Level 2, same country-wide advisory |
| Where the advisory points | Most crime in Nassau and Freeport; "Over the Hill", south of Shirley Street | Not named in the advisory |
| Share of 2025 police figures | 76 of 83 homicides, 157 of 162 armed robberies | Part of the remaining 7 homicides and 5 armed robberies, shared with every other island |
| Scale and setting | Dense capital island, about 6.1 million cruise passengers in 2025 | A scattered chain of small cays reached by boat or a short flight |
| What visitors mostly do | Port, downtown, beaches, half-day boat tours | Boat days, sandbars, the Big Major Cay pigs |
| What the statistics cover | Island-wide totals, not tourist-corridor totals | Island-wide totals |
Why the comparison is not as simple as two numbers
Nassau's totals include an entire capital city, with its own residential neighbourhoods, its own social problems and its own domestic crime, almost none of which a visitor on a boat tour ever touches. The Exumas have no city to generate a comparable total. Comparing the two is closer to comparing a capital with a rural county than comparing two resorts.
We have deliberately not published a per-capita figure here, because we do not have verified population numbers for both places from a source we trust, and inventing one to make the point land better would be worse than leaving it out. What the published data supports is this: the Exumas record far less crime in absolute terms, the advisory does not distinguish between them, and the crime Nassau records is concentrated in areas no tour goes near. Our fuller look at how safe Nassau really is works through the same sources in more detail.
Does any of this affect a day tour out of Nassau?
Very little. A visitor on an organised Nassau tour spends the day with a guide and a group, mostly on the water or in a vehicle, moving between the port, the historic sites and the cays. That is not the environment the crime statistics describe, and the statistics are island-wide totals rather than tourist-corridor totals. The risks that do apply to a tour day are mundane ones.
They are: unmetered taxis and fare disputes, persistent vendor pressure around the port and on Bay Street, sun and sea conditions, and the poorly regulated end of the water-sports rental trade that the advisory names. Agreeing the taxi fare first handles the first, a firm no handles the second, a morning departure handles the third, and booking a captained boat from an established operator rather than renting a jet ski off the sand handles the fourth. A crewed day like the three-island speedboat trip takes all four of those decisions out of your hands, which is most of its practical value. The areas to keep off the walking route are listed in our piece on where not to go in Nassau.
So where does that leave the booking decision?
If safety is the deciding factor between an Exuma trip and a Nassau day, the data does not support cancelling Nassau. It supports being sensible in Nassau, which mostly means staying in the corridor visitors use, booking transport and tours rather than improvising them, and doing the water with people who do it every day. The rest is preference and budget.
If the Exumas are what you actually want, our look at the Exuma pig beach day trip prices it honestly, and we have measured the two options against each other in Nassau versus Exuma on distance and cost. We do not sell Exuma trips. What we do sell is the Nassau day, from the two-hour cultural trolley run through downtown to a full day on the water: guided, group-based, and back at the Nassau cruise port before the ship leaves. The nine tours we list are all run by operators working the same routes daily.