Cur­tis Williams

Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Con­sis­tent­ly ranked as one of the Caribbean is­lands with the high­est mur­der rates, Ja­maica has suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ed the risk to its brand and re­mains a safe des­ti­na­tion for its vis­i­tors.

Last Wednes­day the coun­try wel­comed its one mil­lionth guest for the year as its tourism re­bounds strong­ly from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In an in­ter­view here in Mon­tego Bay, the is­land’s di­rec­tor of tourism Dono­van White said the high crime and mur­der rates have not de­terred in­vest­ments in the sec­tor and the coun­try is in an ex­pan­sion mood.

White told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, “From a risk per­spec­tive every in­vestor has their risk tol­er­ance and has their own risk analy­sis that al­low them to make de­ci­sions on their in­vest­ment. We have nev­er had an in­vestor who has turned down the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in Ja­maica be­cause of se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons and that is a proud rep­u­ta­tion that we have.”

He ex­plained that Ja­maica has been care­ful­ly fo­cused and stayed on the mes­sage that crime and vi­o­lence af­fect less than one per cent of vis­i­tors to the is­land which White ar­gued was an em­pir­i­cal fact.

“And so for us, in terms of en­sur­ing that we pro­vide an en­abler area across Ja­maica in terms of our re­sort ar­eas, that pro­vide a lev­el of safe­ty and seam­less­ness of move­ment for every tourists who comes in­to the coun­try, is our pride and joy,” White told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He said: “We have been able to con­tin­ue to aug­ment that. We have been able to en­sure the kind of rigour sur­round­ing des­ti­na­tion as­sur­ance is de­liv­ered to every vis­i­tor that comes in­to the coun­try and where there are vari­ances we have tried to en­sure that we ad­dress those is­sues proac­tive­ly and if not proac­tive, im­me­di­ate­ly re­ac­tive, so that they do not be­come an is­sue for our tourism prod­uct.”

White added: “So it is more an is­sue of un­der­stand­ing your en­vi­ron­ment to the ex­tent that you are able to be ei­ther proac­tive, so you act be­fore some­thing hap­pens, so you are able to en­sure that des­ti­na­tion as­sur­ance is guar­an­teed, but at the same time some things will hap­pen, that is just the na­ture of life, the na­ture of busi­ness, so we have to make sure we put the things in place to be able to re­act im­me­di­ate­ly.”

White said the lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to the tourism sec­tor does not dri­ve up costs and re­duce prof­its since there is in his words “no over ex­er­tion of ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

White ad­mit­ted that Ja­maica has a crime prob­lem but point­ed out it was not unique to the is­land.

“Like every coun­try, right across this world, there are chal­lenges with se­cu­ri­ty at many lev­els, some more than some, I think what we have done is ap­pre­ci­at­ed where we are in the man­age­ment of our own se­cu­ri­ty, not just for vis­i­tors who come to the coun­try, but for Ja­maicans who have to live in Ja­maica, and I be­lieve we have done an out­stand­ing job to date. There is still lots of ways to go and there still are ar­eas of our se­cu­ri­ty gov­er­nance that we have to im­prove, but we are ac­knowl­edg­ing of that and we are recog­nis­ing that we have room to grow and we are em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow,” White posit­ed.

Ja­maica’s tourism, par­tic­u­lar­ly its con­struc­tion of ho­tels and oth­er prop­er­ties, has been a much need­ed shot in the arm for Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd which is head­quar­tered in Trinidad but owns a ma­jor plant in the North West­ern Caribbean is­land.

Sev­er­al large ho­tels are at present un­der con­struc­tion on the is­land in­clud­ing two new San­dals prop­er­ties.

White was asked if there was any con­cern that there may be an over ex­pan­sion of tourism on the is­land. He rub­bished any sug­ges­tion that the is­land could be close to ca­pac­i­ty.

“We don’t be­lieve we are any where near to ca­pac­i­ty at this point in time. Present­ly Ja­maica has some­where in the or­der of 32,000 rooms—when you com­pare with out chief com­peti­tors, say Mex­i­co, let’s just take Quin­tana Roo, by it­self as a part of Mex­i­co, it is 125,000 rooms, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is 85,000 rooms, so from a ca­pac­i­ty stand­point, just look­ing at the land­mass we are talk­ing about com­par­a­tive­ly, we are not at ca­pac­i­ty.” White added.

He said Ja­maica is very fo­cused on ex­pand­ing the tourism prod­uct in oth­er parts of the is­land that are con­sid­ered green­field or un­used ter­ri­to­ries. For ex­am­ple, in the east­ern belt of the coun­try.

White ex­plained: “In St Thomas there are some of the most beau­ti­ful, pic­turesque ar­eas of Ja­maica, that are com­plete­ly green­field. Those ar­eas have been scoped for de­vel­op­ment of tourism and there has been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work done al­ready in terms of do­ing the nec­es­sary en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies, do­ing the nec­es­sary ca­pac­i­ty stud­ies and those ar­eas are now ready for in­vest­ments, and ready to be shown to in­vestors.”

“We are al­so look­ing at the ex­pan­sion of the Ocho Rios area, we are al­so look­ing at the ex­pan­sion of Port An­to­nio in terms of a more lux­u­ri­ous, eco friend­ly des­ti­na­tion. We are look­ing at the ex­pan­sion of the south coast which is still a very vir­gin ter­ri­to­ry, un­der de­vel­oped in terms of our tourism as­set de­vel­op­ment, but in do­ing that we al­so have to con­tin­ue to do what I said ear­li­er, the de­vel­op­ment of the in­fra­struc­ture around some of these ar­eas. The road net­work, the trans­porta­tion net­work, the en­able­ment of Ja­maican cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate in the own­er­ship and de­vel­op­ment of these ar­eas, through tourism as well as through busi­ness.”

Ja­maica has al­so added new prod­ucts to their of­fer­ings, in­clud­ing a Trinidad-styled Car­ni­val.

Its Min­is­ter of Tourism Ed­mund Bartlett said the is­land does not want to take over T&T’s Car­ni­val but rather en­hance it.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bartlett said: “Ja­maica is not tak­ing away Car­ni­val, Ja­maica is adding val­ue to Car­ni­val.”

In 2019, be­fore the pan­dem­ic, every room and Airbnb prop­er­ty in Kingston and en­vi­rons was sold out for the days lead­ing up to the is­land’s car­ni­val, so much so that some peo­ple had to find ac­com­mo­da­tion as far away as Ocho Rios-two hours dri­ve from Kingston.

The is­land’s Tourism Min­is­ter said Ja­maica stum­bled in­to Car­ni­val but is ex­cit­ed and com­mit­ted to host­ing it and let­ting it be part of its tourism of­fer­ing.

“Ja­maica has sought of walked in­to the car­ni­val are­na and is lit­er­al­ly tak­ing it over. Our Trinida­di­an friends prob­a­bly won’t agree with that (laughs), but I think that we have come a good way with it. It’s good be­cause what it says is that there can be a com­mon Caribbean cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence that we can take from is­land to is­land, just the same way I think that reg­gae has be­come quite a re­gion­al genre and that peo­ple all over the world en­gage in—so car­ni­val can be­come a sim­i­lar kind of glob­al mu­si­cal and danc­ing in­stru­ment and we look for­ward to that.”

This year Ja­maica’s Car­ni­val will be held from Ju­ly 1 to Ju­ly 10, hav­ing been pushed back from ear­li­er this year be­cause of con­cerns about the covid-19 virus.