WESTERN BUREAU — The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) projects to save US$2.5 million a year from the reorganisation of its operations, including the planned closure of three offices in the United States and one in Europe, according to tourism director, Paul Pennicook.

“My recurrent savings are going to be about two-and-a-half million US dollars a year,” Pennicook told the Sunday Observer after he had outlined the restructuring plans to tourism executives in Montego Bay yesterday at the annual conference of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA).

The reorganisation will be completed within the next year to 18 months.

“Our priority, particularly at this time, is to maximise the assets that we have,” Pennicook told the JHTA conference. “It is only the most efficient among us that are going to survive in this environment. That was the thinking behind the careful restructuring that is going on at the tourist board.”

Pennicook took over as JTB head in March with a mandate to speed up the restructuring of the organisation which, in the past, has come under criticism for spending too much of its money on administration and not enough on its core function — enticing tourists to come to Jamaica.

The reorganisation, based substantially on a review conducted by the management consultants and auditors, Deloitte and Touche, will see the closures of JTB offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in the United States and Frankfurt, Germany. In Jamaica the offices in Negril and Ocho Rios and Black River are to be shut down, too.

“The new structure coming out of these recommendations is designed to be mission-focussed, lean, aggressive, creative and to make the best use of technology,” Pennicook told his tourism colleagues. “It is our intention to have our marketing efforts be consistent and research-driven.”

With the reorganisation, the JTB will maintain overseas offices in Toronto, London and Miami.

Pennicook strongly defended the plan to have a US office in Miami rather than elsewhere in the country.

He said: “I’m sure some people will say, ‘Well, why Florida?’ It’s very simple. The overseas operations for the JTB do not need to be located in the area from which we get most of our guests for the simple reason that the work of the office overseas is not really to interact with the individual from the areas that come to Jamaica. The function of the office overseas is to deliver a service to travel agents, tour operators, airlines and to a lesser extent, our consumers.

“It (the office) could be located anywhere because our consumers and the partners who use our services do not really go into our offices. We go to them. (Further) it is far more economical to operate an office in South Florida. And most importantly, if (the tourism) minister, myself or anybody wants to visit the office, I can get on an Air Jamaica flight in the morning, go to the office in Miami, spend the day and come back that evening.”

He stressed, too, the restructuring will mean a new approach to the job by the JTB market representatives.

“They will simply work from home with a laptop computer, which they are already provided with, and connect into one central area,” Pennicook said. “They will, therefore, not need a physical office to do the work because their work is really being on the road.”

Among the other changes under the restructuring are:

* the employment of a specialist to deal exclusively with tour operators, compared to the previous system of regional managers with responsibility for particular territories;

* the enhancement of the JTB’s MIS (Management Information System) department to make better use of new technologies available; and

* the employment of a research analyst in the agency’s marketing department to take advantage of the data collected.

In addition, Pennicook said the JTB would be cutting events marketing, which will be left to members of the private sector. The only role the agency will play with respect of events marketing, he said, would be to help in the promotion of those events geared at bringing visitors to the island.

“We have established a new sub-committee of the JTB, which gets the appeal for support for events and determines the quantum in nature of the support,” he explained. “As a marketing agency, we have to be focussed on our mandate and leave the matter of actual event development to our private sector partners. Naturally, events which are recognised as having the potential of driving business to the island will, within our capabilities, receive support, but primarily in the area of publicity and promotions.”