TOURISM MUST play a major part in any economic recovery this new year. This early in the current season the prospects seem tentative, even as we reflect on views expressed last November in an Editors Forum staged in Montego Bay, the Second City.
Tourism experts predict that the season will be good in terms of numbers but, as Jamaica as a destination has been 'on sale' for an extended period the financial returns will not be great. The all-inclusive hotels are trying to survive by heavy discounting, with rates at rockbottom. The small hotels are dead, dying, or waiting to be buried as they do not have the option of discounting and the discounted rates of the larger properties directly affect their business.
Montego Bay, the tourism capital of Jamaica, is described as dirty, decrepit, verminous and unhealthy. It is a dangerous city with open manholes into which pedestrians have fallen and been injured. Sewage water still runs on the streets making the city stink. Despite the Street People scandal, MoBay is still home to approximately 70 homeless people categorised as either HIV-positive, insane, drug addicts or financially destitute.
The traffic congestion that chokes the city will not be solved by the construction of a dual carriageway on the Howard Cooke Boulevard and Alice Eldemire Drive. Leaving the airport and heading to Rose Hall, where not only the largest number but the top-of-the-market hotel rooms are located, visitors and locals alike experience long traffic delays, of up to two hours, at Flankers which is not only prone to flooding but for which there is no alternate route.
These are unresolved issues despite infrastructure investment in recent years. Stray animals, in the city and the highways serving it, create risks to visitors and residents alike. It is felt that if these woes are not addressed, MoBay will die like downtown Kingston, and that this death will be expedited when the In-Bond merchants move out of the city in another couple of years.
The solution might be found in the statement of some participants at the forum: that Jamaicans have been told that they are not worth improvement to infrastructure and other investment to improve the quality of life in tourist resorts. Everything is being done for the tourist. If Jamaicans felt that they were as important as the foreign visitor they would treat the land with more respect and there would be less littering, less attempts to vandalise and destroy, more community involvement.
President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce, Mark Kerr-Jarrett offered this summary: "Only a fool does not reinvest the majority of their funds into their highest revenue earner in order to grow it and increase the revenue crop." The revenue earned by tourism, he said, is spread all around elsewhere and then people wonder why the tourism product is deteriorating.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
