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Tourism’s cry for help
JHTA says sector still reeling from Tivoli incident
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Senior staff reporter dunkleya@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
JAMAICA’S tourism industry urgently needs another stimulus package from the Government to recover from the battering it has taken in the stand-off between gunmen and the security forces in Tivoli Gardens, West Kingston.
“We are looking down the barrel of a crisis,” warned president of the Jamaica Hotel Tourist Association (JHTA), Wayne Cummings yesterday.
“Operational costs are climbing at an alarming rate. There is a 60-odd per cent increase in energy cost, particularly electricity. That on the heels of increased taxation, increased GCT (general consumption tax), increases in many other things which are pegged to electricity and on top of that you end up having a security challenge,” Cummings said.
He was addressing Observer editors and reporters at their weekly Monday Exchange forum at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.
Cummings said that hotel bookings for the September period were almost nil, following cancellations that were triggered by the fighting in Tivoli when security forces tried to arrest former strongman Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
He said that while the JHTA was in full support of the security forces being called out and strong crime-fighting strategies right now, the sector needed help.
“While we do that, our businesses need to survive”, he pointed out.
The JHTA, he said, had written to the finance ministry asking it “to look back at, for example, the 50 per cent GCT stimulus given to the sector last year”.
Cummings reiterated the importance of the tourism sector to the Jamaican economy, saying its contribution to the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) was a huge 27.7 per cent, based on a recent study by a United Kingdom-based research group.
The Jamaican tourism sector directly and indirectly employs 284,000 people, representing one in every four jobs. It also accounts for US$3.7 billion a year, the study found.
“They (the government) need to reciprocate now by giving tourism something in return...” added Cummings.
The JHTA boss also noted that the recent injection of US$10 million to boost advertising efforts was up against an estimated US$350 million fall-out caused by the Tivoli incident which shut down the country’s capital for more than three days in May.
In January of 2009, the Government implemented a package of tax cuts, duty exemptions and millions of dollars in loans as part of immediate measures to provide relief to vulnerable sectors of the economy which were buckling under the pressures of the global financial crisis.
Included in that package was a 50 per cent slashing of the GCT paid by the hospitality sector to the State from 8.25 per cent to 4.125 per cent. The measure which had initially been put into effect from January to June that year was extended to September of the same year.
JHTA says sector still reeling from Tivoli incident
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Senior staff reporter dunkleya@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
JAMAICA’S tourism industry urgently needs another stimulus package from the Government to recover from the battering it has taken in the stand-off between gunmen and the security forces in Tivoli Gardens, West Kingston.
“We are looking down the barrel of a crisis,” warned president of the Jamaica Hotel Tourist Association (JHTA), Wayne Cummings yesterday.
“Operational costs are climbing at an alarming rate. There is a 60-odd per cent increase in energy cost, particularly electricity. That on the heels of increased taxation, increased GCT (general consumption tax), increases in many other things which are pegged to electricity and on top of that you end up having a security challenge,” Cummings said.
He was addressing Observer editors and reporters at their weekly Monday Exchange forum at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.
Cummings said that hotel bookings for the September period were almost nil, following cancellations that were triggered by the fighting in Tivoli when security forces tried to arrest former strongman Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
He said that while the JHTA was in full support of the security forces being called out and strong crime-fighting strategies right now, the sector needed help.
“While we do that, our businesses need to survive”, he pointed out.
The JHTA, he said, had written to the finance ministry asking it “to look back at, for example, the 50 per cent GCT stimulus given to the sector last year”.
Cummings reiterated the importance of the tourism sector to the Jamaican economy, saying its contribution to the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) was a huge 27.7 per cent, based on a recent study by a United Kingdom-based research group.
The Jamaican tourism sector directly and indirectly employs 284,000 people, representing one in every four jobs. It also accounts for US$3.7 billion a year, the study found.
“They (the government) need to reciprocate now by giving tourism something in return...” added Cummings.
The JHTA boss also noted that the recent injection of US$10 million to boost advertising efforts was up against an estimated US$350 million fall-out caused by the Tivoli incident which shut down the country’s capital for more than three days in May.
In January of 2009, the Government implemented a package of tax cuts, duty exemptions and millions of dollars in loans as part of immediate measures to provide relief to vulnerable sectors of the economy which were buckling under the pressures of the global financial crisis.
Included in that package was a 50 per cent slashing of the GCT paid by the hospitality sector to the State from 8.25 per cent to 4.125 per cent. The measure which had initially been put into effect from January to June that year was extended to September of the same year.
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