By Lavern Clarke, Staff Reporter
JAMAICA HAS secured no new major hotel developments within the past year, but a number of new rooms will be added to the current stock of 24,000 as various properties expand and several small operations hit the market.
By far the largest capital investment to come on stream is linked to Rose Hall Development Limited, the Rollins company, which is tidying up a $980 million deal to develop luxury seaside villas under a "private residential club" plan, similar to the product at Tryall.
Jamaica Promotions Limited, the agency responsible for bringing in tourism investments, estimates that between June this year to December 2004, some $4.43 billion will be spent adding some 700 new rooms to the existing complement, and more than 1,000 jobs.
Currently, not all the rooms in inventory are on the market. Jamaica Tourist Board figures indicate that at the end of 2002, there were 16,092 active rooms, representing some two-thirds of the total stock.
The new developments will be spread across six parishes, including a new 40-room resort in Kingston - a $204 million project, which sources say might be a spa. Jampro refused comment on the individual projects, in deference, the agency said, to investor requests that their business not be revealed.
PLANS FOR EXPANSION
However, Wednesday Business was reliably informed that Rose Hall Development, based in Montego Bay, and Couples Swept Away Resort in Negril were the top two of the new big spenders, with the latter planning to invest more than half a billion dollars under a plan to double the existing 134-room property.
RHDL general manager, Stanley Nansen, said his company has entered into a joint venture deal with a Florida based operation to provide the luxury villas, with RHDL putting up the land. Nansen referred to the plan as a "time share" project, but sales director Candace Kirk said they were really developing a "private residential club."
The development - which is to be located in the vicinity of the Wyndham Rose Hall hotel, has been designed as two villages, says Kirk, to be called Caribbean Heights, which has 18 lots, and West Indies Estates, which will have about 10 villas.
The individuals buying property build their own villas. Kirk said five villas are already under construction with the first to be completed in July, and that each villa, which measures 10,000-12,000 square feet, costs upwards of US$800,000 to build.
Couples Swept Away meanwhile will be adding 147 new rooms at $591.5 million, some of which will come on stream by September, Jampro reports.
The hotel's general manager, Ricardo Bowleg, said the property owners would be meeting for final discussions within a week or two and so would not comment on the plans, nor confirm Jampro's information.
The investment agency's figures cover projects at various stages, including the previously announced US$60 million Riu Resort property, the Spanish firm's second in Negril.
The new resort has been under construction since last year, and is set for opening this September or October. Riu's long term plan is to develop three properties here. Since its arrival here, the firm has boosted Jamaica's access to the Spanish market, and is bringing in some 6,500 visitors from that side of Europe.
Jampro had also been in discussion with another European company, Melia, but the initial talks with the travel firm went nowhere, according to the investment promotion agency's Leisure Tourism Film and Entertainment manager, Adrian Bayley-Hay, who said Melia was more interested in securing management contracts.
CAPITAL INVESTMENT
Jampro's reported $4.4 billion capital investment, of which the Riu development accounted for half the sum, does not fully capture all tourism related developments as the agency only reports on deals it either brokers or is involved with at some level.
Another large hotel, the Sandals Whitehouse (formerly Beaches Whitehouse) development being done by the Urban Development Corporation, represents another 360-room addition and US$70 million (about J$4 billion) of investment. The property is slated to enter the market in mid-2004.
The Riu development and Sandals Whitehouse together will bring to five, the number of new large hotels to hit the market since 1999. They join Hedonism III (225 rooms), the Rollins' Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall (420 rooms), and Riu Tropical Bay (380 rooms), which entered the market in 2001.
