STEWART. we have to keep up with the times

WESTERN BUREAU - Chairman of Sandals Resorts International, Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, one of the most powerful local voices in tourism, yesterday endorsed calls for casino gaming to be introduced here.

"We have to keep up with the times so it is high time now that we have it (casino gambling)," Stewart told the Observer, apparently now convinced that it would boost the tourism product.

The hotelier who says he has no vested interest in casinos, argued that it was now seen as a business with a lot of integrity and could provide an added attraction for visitors to the island.

The church has long campaigned against its introduction on the basis that it could spell a moral decay of the society and open up the island to crime.

An official casino lobby had emerged, years ago, out of Montego Bay, Jamaica's main tourism centre and a place where Stewart operates several hotels, including his flagship property, Sandals Montego Bay, but it was no match for the church.

Businessmen Winston Dear and Godfrey Dyer were two of the main proponents. Dear then had wanted to integrate a stand-alone casino in an upscale project he and his partners were developing, called The Lagoons.

But Stewart has never before spoken decisively for casinos - the introduction of which would mean a change in government policy - but his comment now will likely add even more muscle to a lobby that has long grown beyond Montego Bay.

The SRI chairman now says it is a ready market waiting to be tapped.

"There are a lot of people in this world (and) while they will go to the beach and they want a nice meal and some entertainment, casino is in their blood and they won't go to an island or place without casinos there," Stewart argued.

Only last week, one of the more powerful movers and shakers in the Patterson administration, Kingsley Thomas, essentially called on the Prime Minister to take the plunge, arguing at a Rotary meeting where he spoke that lucrative investments were at stake.

Thomas was thinking then of a potential US$1 billion investment in his new pet project, Harmony Cove in Trelawny, that he said two of the world's leading casino operators were prepared to make.

Junior tourism minister Dr Wykeham McNeill has indicated to the Observer that the government was now studying the form that casino gaming would take here, if it were to say yes to the lobby.

"While in a general sense a lot of people agree with the basic principle of gambling, the question of how it is implemented is just as important and that is why the government is taking so long to decide," McNeil said.

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