Desmond Henry TREASURE BEACH:
THE GLEANER'S staff reporter Yvonne Chin did a superb job in that one-page spread on the South Coast last Saturday, July 13. Her grasp and appreciation of the area's distinctive qualities, and the nature of the things which set it apart are precisely the virtues that we on the South Coast have been writing, talking and marketing about for some 20 years now. Welcome to the coast with the most.
We call it community tourism, and have been articulating its unique credentials as part of a pre-planned development programme for the entire South Coast. Indeed, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) coastal study of five years ago said explicitly that community tourism should be the leading principle in the coast's future development, with the Black River/Treasure Beach area as its central axis.
Now that reporter Chin and her tour group have been visually overwhelmed, perhaps I should let them into a portion of the overall thinking of this pristine geographic area.
The marketing repositioning of the South Coast is being led assertively by Countrystyle Limited, based in Mandeville. Along with various community leaders and tourism investors, Countrystyle has defined, identified and brought together an entire range of community activities with the single purpose of widening the choice of outdoor options to our visitors, whilst enabling communities away from the traditional resort areas to become earners in the tourism.
Simply put, we describe community tourism in its simplest form, as off-the-beach tourism so as to set a wider psychological framework for a new understanding. Thus, for example, all the new talked-about areas of visitor interest including heritage, culture, spiritual, study, sports and lifestyle, now become genuine and credible areas of community teaching and awareness. It's not by accident, for example, that the south has long grouped itself with most of the country's best bona fide outdoor attractions.
The specific areas identified in Ms. Chin's article - Lovers Leap, Pedro Bluff, Great Bay and Great Pond - are integral parts of the coast's present attractiveness, plus others well known as well as new ones being identified and earmarked to be brought on stream. Some being looked at, for example, are the relocation of the Iguanas from the Hellshire area to the Pedro Bluff; the use of cable cars for sightseeing tours of the southern Spur Tree and Santa Cruz mountain slopes; and the possibility of creating the Caribbean's first and largest cactus farm in the Great Bay area.
In addition, the first community tourism Handbook aimed at documenting all facets of describing, identifying and training in the development of community tourism will be published as an indispensable tool in the appreciation and interpretation of this new directional thrust. This will ensure that every school, community and private sector gathering in the target areas, will speak and postulate in common language and understanding. Already, organisations like Sandals through their proposed White House extension have been working co-operatively to ensure that community understanding and training are kept at high levels. Many overseas funding agencies have indicated interest in various aspects as well. All this represents just the tip of the community tourism iceberg.
PICTORIAL PROMISCUITY
About three weeks ago I wrote a piece on the utterly disgraceful, contemptuous and vulgar manner in which our women are being portrayed on commercial postcards developed here by foreign nationals and marketed to the world by some of our thoughtless gift store operators.
In Negril last week, a foreign tour operator stopped me to say how much he supported my stand, and proceeded to tell me that my comments apparently have not made a single difference in the souvenir market in that town. If anything, Jamaican women's parts are now being more vulgarly portrayed in the open, apparently in anticipation of that pretty soon day when someone in authority might just get it into their head to say "enough slackness is enough."
With a female Minister of Tourism, I hope it won't be long before she orders a termination of this muck once and for all. Must we continue to be sold as filth to the hilt? Come on!
THE BOTTOM LINE:
It takes the whole you, to make the better half.
Desmond Henry is a marketing specialist based in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth.
