Howard Hamilton - Horse Sense I AM beginning to think that Jamaica's tourism industry is being hijacked by anthropologists and academics. All the talk recently of heritage tourism and community tourism, while not to be discouraged, needs to be balanced by serious input from business people.
We need to take a holistic approach to tourism in Jamaica. I accept that it is important that it enjoys the acceptance and enthusiastic support of the "small man" or its future will be limited, if not grim. However, if tourism is ever to develop the momentum that our economic malaise is demanding that it achieve, performance at a much higher level will be as necessary.
We must accept that a new paradigm has been established. Having ruled the roost for a decade or two with our innovations in all-inclusive resort development, Jamaica has lost ground once again to The Bahamas, the tourism industry of which is being driven by the huge and immensely profitably Atlantis resort/casino/attraction.
I do not advocate that we turn ourselves over to the single-minded pursuit a similarly large and monolithic development. However, we have to develop a suitable response to this trend. Either we go along to some or the full extent or we create some new and equally exciting way of capturing the consumer's imagination.
I believe Jamaica's hotel room inventory slipped by 13 per cent between 1994 and 1999. We were easily surpassed by Cuba's 43 per cent increase, Cancun's 17 per cent and the Dominican Republic, which took our all-inclusive complex and ran with it to achieve a remarkable 17 per cent growth.
These destinations achieved what they did by a combination of private sector clout (yes, even the Cubans) and public sector pragmatism. Seems to me public pragmatism is in short supply in Jamaica these days.
The situation in each destination is different: Each country offers a unique mix of labour, skills, costs, available resources and assets upon which to capitalise. By the same token, however, many of the islands in the region have similar traits and qualities. For decades we Jamaicans have smugly believed ourselves to be the only beautiful island and that droves of tourists will follow in Errol Flynn's footsteps and beat a path to our door. I can hear readers younger than 35 asking "Errol who?"
I believe the beauty of the island, from the scenic perspective, is of limited value in today's tourism market. To reduce the concept to its most basic and industrial level, one could say that the business is now quite an aggressive and industrial-scale activity, one that relies on huge and highly productive resort "machines" to attract and "process" tourists. That's what is being done in Cancun, Mexico; in Veradero, Cuba and in the Dominican Republic.
As hotelier John Issa said here recently: "If we remain small-minded, we will remain small." Perhaps is was this very frustration that has driven Mr. Issa's SuperClubs to a point where it now operates more hotel rooms outside of Jamaica than within it.
Let us make a determination to dream and envision on a mega-scale, to create new paradigms and blaze new trails. Let us look beyond regarding the delivery of the occasional tour bus to a rural square as a major achievement in tourism development and visualise instead the creation of a truly dazzling and hugely profitable industry comprising large and small components that have beneficial impacts at every level of society.
I have deliberately avoided making too much of a case for casinos, racinos or anything of the kind. While I remain fully convinced that these have a valuable and catalytic role to play in these developments, I am also convinced that any reasonable person of vision will eventually come to this conclusion independently. After all, developing a product and then seeking a market for it is to go about things bass-ackwards, as the saying goes. Better to identify the market and create a product to suit.
Even cursory research will demonstrate how huge the demand is for gaming activities in today's entertainment market. Information is abundant and easily to locate on the Internet to demonstrate how virtual backwaters have been transformed into successful destinations by harnessing this lucrative demand and using the profits for civic enhancement and tourism development.
When I read those case-histories, I can't help mumbling to myself "There, but for wooly-headed thinking, goes Jamaica".
