By Ayanna Kirton, Staff Reporter 
The Gloustershire Hotel, a 95-room property in Montego Bay.
OPERATORS OF Jamaica's small hotels, villas and apartments are generally painting a positive picture of the prospects for the end of 2003 through to the middle of 2004.
Carmen McKnight, executive director of Jamaica Association of Villas (JAVA) and Apartments said it was early to speculate the overall performance of smaller hotels and villas in this winter tourist season, but many of the JAVA's member properties were experiencing favourable occupancy levels, averaging about 88 per cent in the last two weeks.
She said the 400-member association was heartened that the JTB had made the move towards marketing Jamaica's villas and other smaller properties because larger hotels dominated them in this area.
Falcon Cottages, a 27-room hotel on Negril's West End is now 70 per cent full.
PROJECTIONS
General manager, Prince Nunes said that his projections showed that occupancy levels will increase by as much as 25 per cent in points in the new year but he is worried about the country's crime problem and the harassment of visitors to his hotel by local hustlers.
"This is a huge deterrent to hotel guests who are often afraid to leave the hotel or even return to the destination because of this," said Nunes. He cited the lack of interest in smaller hotels by travel agents as another major challenge to the small hotel owner. "A lot of them are not interested in selling smaller hotels and most focus only on the larger all-inclusive chains," he said.
LARGER GROUPS
Still, the outlook at the West Ender Hotel in Negril is even rosier. After a $30 million renovation completed last month, the 11-room hotel has had to ask neighbouring hotels to accommodate West Ender guests in order to facilitate larger groups of visitors.
The property's United States based owners have employed a range of marketing tactics from Internet marketing to advertisements in bridal magazines to publicise the property.
General manager of the property, Audrey Hutchinson says the hotel's facilities also help to sell the property and the planned construction of a state of the art conference room will enable the West Ender to capitalise on the local corporate market as well.
The Gloustershire in Montego Bay also anticipates a good winter tourist season particularly for the period after Boxing Day to New Year's Day. "This is the norm for this period," observed Veviene McDonald, the hotel's general manager, who said current occupancy levels looked better than last year's.
"We are getting a lot of last minute bookings via travel web sites which have been very helpful for business," Ms. McDonald said.
Most of the smaller hotel owners in the major resort towns are enjoying this period immediately after Christmas when occupancy levels begin to increase. And many have come to depend heavily on repeat visitors to sustain their businesses.
