AFTER NINE years as Jamaica's Director of Tourism, Fay Pickersgill is quitting. She says she will not be available for renewal of her contract, which expires in January 2003.
In preparation for demitting office, Mrs. Pickersgill will go on vacation leave from November 1.
Her decision was formally communicated on Wednesday to William Clarke, chairman of the Jamaica Tourist Board, and Portia Simpson Miller, Minister of Tourism and Sport.
Some months ago, some Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association members criticised Mrs. Pickersgill over the state of the island's tourism industry. After presenting a 39-page report on the industry at a conference, Mrs. Pickersgill came under heavy fire, as it was felt that her two-hour presentation lacked depth and projection for the future. The meeting also threatened to break up in disorder as participants voiced their disapproval of an announcement by Mrs. Pickersgill, that an agency would be contracted to propose how the board should be restructured.
Earlier, in an attack on the JTB and the Ministry of Tourism, Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, chairman of the Sandals Resorts, said the island's tourism industry was being run by people who were either inept or had no sense of what their duties were. According to him, the JTB not only had no strategic plan for any of the country's primary markets, but lacked the administrative competence to realise that it was failing in its duty to the industry.
He said that for more than three years, he along with others in the industry, had been warning the JTB that it was suicidal for it to allocate more than 25 per cent of its budget for administrative purposes. Then, Mrs. Pickersgill said that she was both stunned and shocked by what she called the unwarranted attacks on the JTB by Mr. Stewart. She said that a financial crisis being faced by her agency was the result of the failure of the Ministry of Finance to hand over money to the JTB and not because of ineptness as suggested by Mr. Stewart.
She has been Jamaica's longest serving Director of Tourism, having been appointed to the post in 1994.
In a release issued on Wednesday, the JTB said that Mrs. Pickersgill had guided it in renewed initiatives for the European Market and increased its emphasis on events marketing, the African American market and special interest travel. Locally, Mrs. Pickersgill's tenure has seen great emphasis on sensitising younger Jamaicans on the value and potential of tourism, notably through a programme of infusing tourism into the curriculum of Jamaican schools in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture, JTB said. She was named by Travel Agent Magazine as one of the most powerful women in the travel business.
Mrs. Pickersgill said that at the JTB, she had served under different political administrations, several Ministers of Tourism and chairmen of the JTB, "always feeling herself to be part of a respected and vital organisation working assiduously for the development of tourism as a major pillar of our island's economy."
"While there have been many challenges," she said, "I have derived immense satisfaction, fulfilment and enjoyment in carrying out my tasks over these many years."
She pointed to the increased challenges that have faced tourism locally and internationally in recent months and commended members of the JTB who, she said, had persevered in the face of severe difficulties to ensure improving results for the vital industry which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the island's gross foreign exchange earnings.
