Howard Hamilton - Horse Sense IN AN apparently well-intentioned contribution to the tourism product/casino debate Max Lambie wrote of tourism alternatives in a recent article. He failed, however, to take his own advice and put a great deal of misinformation into circulation.
There were many factual errors, some large and some small. The small errors of fact betrayed a paucity of research and suggested that Mr. Lambie was relying on an increasingly faulty memory.
MAJOR ERRORS
The major errors, however, were in the conclusions he reached and the routes of reasoning he used to arrive at them. Most of all, I was concerned at his persistence in not recognising that it is at least as important to count dollars spent per capita as it is to count heads passing the turnstile.
While the head-through-the-gate count does underpin certain jobs per room ratios, maximising the yield from each occupied room is the goal of the pro-casino lobby.
To arrive at a conclusion that casinos are not all that they are cracked up to be as facets of a tourism product, Mr. Lambie offered the following:
"Ironically, the Bahamas, which has been touted by advocates of casino gambling, had only 1.3 percent recovery in stopover tourism for the first half of 2003, despite the opening of the Atlantis attraction. Indeed analysts estimate that had it not been for Atlantis, the Bahamas would have had 3 per cent reduction in stopover tourism." I disregarded the suppositions of unnamed "analysts" but I took the trouble to check with sources in the Bahamas and my findings painted an entirely different picture.
THREE MAIN TOURISM ZONES
First, being familiar with the archipelago and the difference in character of its three main tourism zones, Nassau and Paradise Island, where there are two casinos; Grand Bahamas Island with one casino and the Out Islands, with none, I recognised that to compare apples with apples, one should look at the Nassau and Paradise Island destination for a more accurate comparison with Jamaica. In fact I found that, by various criteria one could describe little Paradise Island, at the heart of which beats a thriving .... sq. ft. casino, pumping a million gallons of water per day through its magnificent aquarium and water park attractions. is the number one destination in the region, let alone the Bahamas. Be that as it may, let us take Paradise as a suburb of Nassau for the sake of this discussion.
There are two casinos in this destination and there is another, not yet used licence in the hands of a third operator. These two casinos operate at the core of resort complexes far larger in size than anything we have in Jamaica.
Indeed Sol Kerzner operates under his Atlantis brand more rooms than Jamaica's largest hotel operators offer in entire chains. If the operators of these hotels had no casinos to operate the resorts would simply not exist. This is true despite any suggestion Lambie may make to the contrary.
Lambie offered, as alternatives to casino operations, the suggestion that a destination would do as well with shopping as a feature as it would with casinos. It is widely accepted that casinos, in and of themselves are not, repeat are not significant tourist attractions.
BAHAMAS CASE HISTORY
To stick with the Bahamas case history, we find that they are hardly a blip on the scale of visitor attractions. Sun, sand and sea still rule. However, Atlantis now figures as one of that destination's most powerful draws. Am I to assume that, given Mr. Lambie's argument in support of shopping as an equal to casinos as facets of a dynamic tourism industry, Atlantis would do as well if it were to substitute a shopping mall for its casino?
There is little to be gained from too direct a comparison between the economic contributions of the tourism industries of the Bahamas and that of Jamaica. There are far greater linkages between tourism and the wider economy here than there is there. In fact the ratios are almost reversed: Jamaica's hotel sector purchases some 70 percent of its goods and supplies on the local market, while the Bahamas imports that much.
While Lambie seems preoccupied with stopover arrivals, I am more preoccupied with yield. Regarding the same January to June period for which he claimed the Bahamas had "only 1.3 per cent recovery in stopover tourism", I was impressed to find that Nassau and Paradise Island had increased revenue per available room by three per cent and overall room revenue by 1.8 per cent. In fact, Atlantis alone generated earnings of US$142 million in 2002, an increase of 11 per cent and 20 per cent respectively over 2000 and 2001.
Of the US$208 million won by the three Bahamian casinos in the 12 months ending June 2001, some US$22 million went to the government as tax, a handsome figure in a country with a population of some 255,000.
AFTER 9/11
A year after the devastating 9/11 blow to the hemisphere's tourism industry, an overview of the industry in the Caribbean showed that, while recovery is occurring faster in some than in others, those that featured gaming as a facet of their tourism product were recovering at a faster rate than others. Analysts attributed this to that fact that casinos have enabled those destinations to afford more powerful and, yes expensive marketing efforts to win visitors back. Its not exactly rocket science.
John Bell, the Caribbean Hotel Association's Executive Director, says "Gaming is a key issue in tourism development in the Caribbean. When you look at 200-room resorts, one with a casino and another without, obviously the presence of a casino makes a world of difference." More to the point, consider a 1,500 room resort with a casino and try to envisage one without. The latter effort will be more difficult, as there are no such examples in the region.
DECLINING MANUFACTURING SECTOR
Like Lambie, however, I tire of this debate over casinos. That there should be one at all in this day and age, in a country with a declining manufacturing sector, a faltering agro-industrial sector with tourism as its only bright hope is remarkable. People get the government they deserve. Our government has had ample input from the populace it governs on this issue. We will see its true mettle when, indeed if, it makes its long-awaited pronouncement on the casino issue.
