THE offices of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and the city’s chapter of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) are expected to be merged soon, as both organisations move to cut costs and maximise the support systems available.

“We’re always looking for a way to be more effective and deliver better service to our members,” said Chamber president, Mark Kerr-Jarrett.

“We’re looking for ways to make representation as cost effective as possible and the more money we can save the more we’ll have to promote the city,” he added.

Head of the Montego Bay chapter of the JHTA, Josef Forstmayr, was equally enthusiastic about the plan.

“We have been considering the merging of the secretariats. The Chamber has very beautiful facilities available and they also have all the secretarial support that is necessary, whereas the JHTA’s local chapter has really been more a meeting of interests. These are powerful interests but not organised on a strong secretarial basis,” he told the Observer.

The Chamber’s offices are now located on the second floor of the Overton Plaza. Last year, they had three persons on staff and paid out salaries of a little over $1 million.

The merger would make sense from the standpoint that the two bodies share a lot of the same members, and according to Forstmayr the move has long been considered as a logical step.

“It’s something that we had decided years ago, when I first was a director of the Chamber, based on the fact that more and more hoteliers had gotten involved in the Chamber,” he said.

“And we’ve also seen a very successful situation in Ocho Rios where that (type of merger) has been working for many, many years. It basically will mean we’d have a better organised local chapter in terms of all the support services necessary for our members. We are willing to go that route.”