PRIME Minister P J Patterson should stop the ongoing row about the Jamaica Tourist Board’s competence, for the good of the tourism industry, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) tourism spokesman Ed Bartlett has said.

Patterson should force the tourist board to “clean up its act” but also must give it “an adequate budget,” Bartlett said.

“We cannot benefit in the industry with the discussion and the debate going on as it is now. And I call on the prime minister to intervene, because this industry is too critical to allow it to disintegrate,” Bartlett told the Negril Chamber of Commerce Tuesday evening.

The public spat over Jamaica’s number one earner of foreign exchange has recently pitted the tourist board against hotel mogul, Gordon “Butch” Stewart, whose initial broadsides were later echoed by other industry players.

Stewart, among other things, charged that the tourist board spends more time promoting itself than the island, and that Jamaica’s international presence has suffered as a consequence.

He has also accused the JTB of spending too much of its budget on administration instead of on advertising the destination.

Although Bartlett said the labour party is “not going to be embroiled in the debate”, he insisted it would do a better job managing Jamaica’s tourism industry.

He reiterated the JLP’s proposal for the tourist board to have a three-year budget instead of its current one-year budget. This would provide continuity in Jamaica’s advertising campaign, he said, and maintain confidence within the tourism industry.

Specifically, Bartlett said, a labour party government would more than double the present US$32 million tourism budget to US$75 million. He said US$40 million would fund marketing and advertising and US$35 million would pay for product development, attractions, and for industry regulators and policing.

Bartlett added that a labour party government would rebuild the small hotel sector of the industry, providing marketing support for the non all-inclusive properties.

“I think we can support that market in two ways,” he said. “One is to restore the strength of relationships with the tour operators within the European market, and the second is to procure the (airline) seats which will ensure that there will be traffic from Europe.”

He added that the labour party would open discussions with airline companies providing service from Europe to Jamaica, such as LTU and Condor, “and we will enter into deeper discussion with Air Jamaica because it does have the capacity to go to Continental Europe”.