UPDATED | Editorial | An honest narrative for tourists

The usual tactic of Jamaica's tourism officials in the face of bad news about the country is first to launch a charm offensive against opinion makers in foreign visitor markets, while downplaying the gravity of the event, hoping to limit its damage. That mostly means cauterising any decline in visitor arrivals.

The strategy generally works. And we sense that that is, again, the go-to approach to deal with the latest potential crisis the island's tourism industry, which, for the sake of the national economy, this newspaper hopes is successful. However, given the circumstance and, critically, the era in which the latest has occurred, we urge the Government's communication strategists to proceed with caution and circumspection, lest they lose the plot.

The times and environment, we suspect, demand more than nice declarations about irie Jamaica, or even heartfelt and solemn expressions of sorrow over what has happened. It is likely to demand some brutal honesty.

Our reference is to last week's report by the US newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, triggered by the recent sexual assault of two women at the RIU Reggae hotel in St James, that 78 American tourists were raped in Jamaica in the seven years up to 2017. A dozen of those cases were reported last year.

"Perhaps most alarming for tourists is that sexual assaults are occurring inside gated resorts - the place they are led to believe they are most safe," reported the Free Press, which went on to provide its readers, including those online, with detailed accounts of some of the attacks from some of the victims and their families.

This kind of scrutiny can, as is the case with other tourism-dependent economies, be unsettling for Jamaica and its officials. For while the industry accounts for only between six and eight per cent of gross domestic product, it's the island's biggest foreign-exchange earner, grossing, in 2017, around US$3 billion from 4.3 million visitors. About 55 per cent of those tourists are stopovers who stay in hotels and account for the vast proportion of the gross income. Moreover, two-thirds of these visitors are Americans.

MINUSCULE PROPORTION

Indeed, in the face of the Detroit Free Press report, the island's tourism ministry pointed out that over the seven years when the reported rapes occurred, more than 20 million Americans visited the island, which, by implication, would make these assaults a minuscule proportion of that number. "Jamaica also has a world-leading and very high repeat visitor rate of 42 per cent, with an extremely low rate of crime against our visitors," the ministry said, while stressing that it condemned these assaults and all other crimes against visitors and citizens.

Getting the tone right and being seen to be taking effective action is important in this era of the #MeToo movement and the global focus on sexual assault and predations against women in the aftermath of Brett Kavanuagh's elevation to the US Supreme Court. Jamaican officials can't afford the tone-deafness of India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley when, in the face of a global outcry against the gang rape of a young student in Delhi, he complained that India was being made to lose billions of dollars in tourism income over "one small incident of rape".

No one here has displayed Mr Jaitley's insensitivity and we don't expect anyone will. Indeed, this matter may just die. Nonetheless, Jamaica needs to calibrate a message that builds sustainable confidence. That narrative might include an acknowledgement that this country is infested with crime, including rape, and significantly, how we are going about dealing with these issues. Jamaica is not merely an idea; it's a country.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this editorial incorrectly identified the location of an alleged rape as the RIU hotel in Ocho Rios. The incident occurred at the RIU Reggae hotel in Montego Bay, St James.)