Claudine Housen, Staff Reporter
PETERKIN
WESTERN BUREAU:
WHILE IT is likely that Hurricane Emily could strike the island this weekend, visitors are nonetheless being encouraged to "come on down to Jamaica."
"We have got calls down here and we are telling them basically to pack their bags and come on down," said Horace Peterkin, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourism Association (JHTA), yesterday.
Meteorologist have been following Hurricane Emily since Monday, a mere three days after Hurricane Dennis wreaked havoc on the eastern part of the island, leaving broken roads and devastated crop lands in its wake.
Mindful of the possible backlash a second storm could have on the industry, Mr. Peterkin was hopeful that the tourism industry will be spared an encounter with Hurricane Emily.
CONCERNS IN THE TRAVEL COMMUNITY
"We are still encouraging people to come on down and hopefully we just get some rainy conditions like Dennis," Mr. Peterkin said. "Yes, there is a
little concern in the travel community and what we are doing is telling everybody that first of all we are very well prepared, our hurricane preparedness plan is in place and we will take care of the clients if they are here and anything happens - we are hopeful that it will not be anything of a direct hit or anything of the power of a major storm."
Citing the passage of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 as an example, Mr. Peterkin said that the rate of recovery for the tourism sector promises to be quite speedy.
"After Gilbert, which was a major hurricane - it hit Jamaica at Category Five - hotels opened within a month and the industry was back in business by December that year," he said. "Tourism recovers a lot faster from disaster than most other industries. It requires some repairs and cleaning up, whereas if you take an industry like banana or sugar cane they are wiped out for a year. It is not as fickle as people imagine and it can recover from disasters a lot quicker as long as the infrastructure like the airports and the roads are in place."
