MONTEGO BAY — Some small property owners across the island are worried that they may be forced to close their doors, at least temporarily, although the Jamaica Tourist Board hopes it will be able to convince overseas agencies to give them advertisements on credit despite an outstanding bill of US$5 million.

“Until now I don’t think anybody (in Negril) has closed but I think that’s more from stubbornness than from economics. If it was based on economics you would have had quite a few of us closing. I am really now considering whether to close and reopen in November,” hotelier Daniel Grizzle told the Observer yesterday afternoon.

He runs the 49-room Charela Inn, which he spent US$40,000 promoting last year. Those ads, Grizzle said, were a waste of money because they were not backed up by JTB ads promoting the country.

“It makes no sense we put these nice expensive ads out in the travel magazines. People choose a country first and then they choose the hotel. So that means for our ads to work, the country has got to be there in the marketplace and this has not been happening for the last two to three years,” he complained.

The JTB expects to receive US$2.5 million, on May 20, to pay half of its outstanding bill. But there is no guarantee that the US ad agency FCB will give it credit to run any new ads. This is the time of year when slick ads can convince travellers about which destination to choose but with its credit problems, Jamaica does not have a presence in the marketplace.

But the lack of presence, Grizzle said, was only one of the problems facing smaller properties. Other major stumbling blocks, he said, include the lack of airlift out of, and promotion within, Continental Europe.

President of the Jamaica Association of Villas and Apartments, Vana Taylor, also expressed concern about the lack of presence in Europe. She runs the 100-room Sunflower Beach Resort in Runaway Bay and, according to her, the smaller properties are not doing well. But she does not attribute it all to the hiccups in promoting the destination.

“We are affected but this downturn was long before lack of advertising, long before September 11; those things only compounded the matter,” she said.

Like Grizzle, Taylor stressed the need to get back the European market, which is the lifeblood of the smaller properties, while exploring other niche markets such as church groups. She is also hoping that the JTB will be able to get a marketing programme for small properties up and running by June. The programme will rely heavily on the use of the Internet to promote the island’s villas and apartments.

Hoteliers in Port Antonio were also concerned about the low occupancy levels and the dismal forward bookings that indicated that things will not get better any time soon. According to proprietor of the Mocking Bird Hill, Barbara Walker, Port Antonio has rarely, if ever, been included in promotional events in the past and it had just began to receive some publicity this year. But with the cut in the tourism budget, she feared that trend might not continue.

Walker told the Observer that there were three German TV crews in Port Antonio in the month of February alone, an event practically unheard of over the last eight years. The increased activity, she said, had stemmed from exposure being provided for the Port Authority’s soon-to-be completed luxury marina and Sandals’ recent acquisition of the Dragon Bay property.

“These are two very large, powerful entities who require that the destination in which they are operating has a presence on the international market. So there is a little bit of hope. …But now that the budget has been cut so drastically I don’t know if this is going to be sustained,” Walker said. “I fear that the promotional activities we see for Port Antonio will not be sustained at the level that it has been sustained during the first quarter of the year. I fear that, and it would be very, very negative for us given the lack of forward bookings that we have.”

But Walker argued that property owners should take their fate into their own hands and find innovative means of staying afloat.

“I believe that if the tourist board does not have the money, and is not going to be given the money, there is no use sitting down and bawling. There are a lot of us and I am sure if we … dip our hands in our pockets according to size, I am sure we could come up with some advertising of our own,” she said.