Bed and breakfast taps into faith tourism

Avia Collinder, Business Writer

Dr. Paul Rhodes, a retired Washington internist of Jewish heritage, has made Portland his home and the base of operations for his post-retirement career.

The former internist is now looking upward with a bed-and-breakfast outfit called Great Huts in the business of faith tourism.

But he also remains faithful to his first love, medical services, as chairman of Portland Rehab Management, which houses indigents.

Great Huts, a cluster of 11 huts on four acres in Boston Bay, Portland, is an eco-tourism destination which is also targeting visitors who wish to explore Afro-Caribbean culture or need tranquil scenery for spiritual recharging.

Rhodes offers a package dubbed Jamaica Shalom, a Caribbean-Jewish vacation inclusive of synagogue visits in Kingston, lessons on the 350-year history and meeting Jamaican Jewish families.

The venture, run as a business for the last three years, with occupancy averaging less than 50 per cent annually, or 10 visitors weekly, is yet to turn a profit.

But with the high winter tourist season just open, Great Huts was 100 per cent booked, with 30 guests on location.

"If we had 11 more huts, they would also have been fully booked," Rhodes insisted last week.

The retreat is one of 18 small properties registered as bed-and- breakfast locations in the parish.

Rhodes, the sole owner, has stepped up marketing online to drive business for his secluded operation.

He said he had been investing US$2,000 monthly on keyword optimisation for his website, and more on a new contract with Bevan Springer's Marketplace Excellence with reach into the Caribbean and North American tourist markets.

Great Huts now pops up in searches for river rafting, and Blue Mountains hiking, a strategy Rhodes says has brought results. Closer to home, Great Huts also gets business from the local Maroons and the Boston Beach barbecue crowd.

Great Huts' 11th unit was constructed just before Christmas at a cost of approximately US$50,000 (J$4.3 million). It is a three-floor stone hut dubbed Queen of Sheba, with bamboo roof, master bedroom on the ground floor, three bedrooms on the second, and a crow's nest on the third with a bird's eye view of the Caribbean Sea.

The retreat, Rhodes stated, suffered the loss of 25 bookings during the second and third quarters of the year because of the western Kingston stand-off over the extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, around 46 kilometres or 29 miles away.

Rhodes said the Dudus effect was felt by other hospitality properties in Portland, but that business was also affected by high annual rainfall, bad roads, and the lack of marketing focus on Portland by the Jamaica Tourist Board, whose spend is targeted at Negril, Ocho Rios, and Montego Bay as destinations with more rooms and "higher returns for the investment dollar".

Another long-standing bugbear of Portland hoteliers, airport proximity, was partially solved last week with the commissioning of the Ian Fleming International Airport at Boscobel in the neighbouring parish of St Mary. The facility was transformed from a domestic aerodrome to Jamaica's third airport for international traffic.

Rhodes first purchased lands in Boston Bay for the hut cluster in 2000.

Great Huts is primarily marketed as a beachfront eco-tourism destination near Port Antonio. It appeals to "independent-minded travellers, nature lovers, romantics, and artists", and now, faith tourists.

Rhodes, who before 2007 ran Great Huts as a hobby, pouring into the retreat savings and investments from a 35-year career in Washington, where he worked as an internist and geriatrist, is now betting the businesses' success on what he describes as a growing pool of faith travellers.

World-wide, the market is estimated at 300 million people who traverse the globe in search of religious enlightenment, and spiritual-experience treks to Mecca and Jerusalem, and other religious centres, are established patterns.

The World Tourism Organisation, at its first 'International Conference on Tourism, Religions and Dialogue of Cultures', which was held in Córdoba, Spain, October 29-31, 2007, estimated that the faith market generated US$18 billion of spend by these travellers.

The doctor believes that faith tourism is a concept that can be facilitated in every Jamaican parish.

"If a hotelier has a sincere intention in sharing with guests a religious experience as well as a respect for divinity, and also appreciates different expressions of divinity and a variety of religious-faith practices, it can be done," he said.

"Great Huts sells and celebrates nature, and the artistic brilliance and spirit of native African people. It is a spiritual backdrop against which prayer, meditation, and study can be carried out."

Accommodation at Great Huts begins at US$60 per night. This includes the guided tours, and yes, TV, and wireless Internet service.

"We are the anti-villa," said Rhodes, who claimed that he had revised the all-inclusive concept to mean reaching the community beyond its gates.

He currently employs 10 persons from the area and trades with more in local Portland communities.

Rhodes told Sunday Business that Jamaicans tend to shun his type of product, showing instead a definite preference for glass, steel and stone in north coast resort areas, and are leery of conditions which remind them too much of rural roots, but that the very wealthy from other countries appear to find it easier to be happy in the retreat's relatively rustic, secure set-up.

"We have huts, the Queen of Sheba and the Fig Tree, which are fit for royalty," he said grandly.

"We have a sincere interest in providing a faith-based experience. We hope to attract those who enjoy nature, surroundings in which they can pray, feel a sense of the divine in landscape and seascape, and also participate in our infirmary activities."

Rhodes first came to Jamaica in 1974 on a two-month elective in the parish of Hanover, through the University of the West Indies, and returned frequently until he settled in Portland.

He has served as a Rotarian leader in the parish and in 1994, founded a charity called JAFI, which assists the infirmaries, which are state-run homes for the indigent.

austanny@yahoo.com