Letter of the Day | Develop sustainable tourism model for Jamaica
Published:Monday | October 16, 2023 | 12:05 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Currently and over the past many years in Jamaica and to some extent the wider Caribbean, our focus has been to measure tourism success in terms of arrivals and earnings.
These measures are superficial as they do not focus on the development impact on our people.
Most of our recent developments are ‘All Inclusive’ which, from the perspective of the majority of the local population, means they are exclusive for foreigners and a few wealthy Jamaicans and Caribbean people, but their facilities and beaches are essentially off limits for locals in our communities.
Most of these developments are also mainly owned by foreign conglomerates whose earnings do not reside in Jamaica or the Caribbean, and they only bring in sufficient funds to pay employees, purchase some local goods and services and taxes.
The result is that certainly in Jamaica, all our major resort towns have beautiful properties (mainly All Inclusive) on the beach side and slums or squatter settlements across the road.
Most of the hotel workers live in the squatter settlements and these areas have little or no access to proper facilities such as proper housing, sewage treatment, water, paved roads, clean drains, regular garbage collection, schools and playgrounds or green areas, and in general substandard social spaces.
Tourism, to be a true driver of “sustainable development”, must more positively impact the living conditions of the majority of the people in our country, and certainly must have a tremendous positive impact on the communities surrounding our resort areas.
Instead of developing all-inclusive enclaves, we must ensure that we develop a new approach to development which includes the development of our communities to encourage and ensure their ability to interact with our visitors and reap the benefits of doing businesses, which can provide tangible improvements to their standard of living.
The tourism sector must work with the National Housing Trust and all the social agencies to target specific communities to have major improvements to their quality of life and opportunities for visitors to interact with our local population and begin to earn income from our visitors.
Keeping the visitors form locals just builds up resentment and will eventually see a blowing up of the situation, which will kill the golden goose in the long run if not addressed now before it is too late.
ROBERT STEPHENS
Pragma Consultants Ltd