SMALL hotel operators have expressed high anticipation for the upcoming winter tourist season, even though forward bookings, for some of them, are not what they would like at this time.

“We expect the season to be better than it was last year, definitely,” Vanna Taylor, president of the Jamaica Association of Villas and Apartments (JAVA), told the Sunday Observer last week.

“We have some properties that are booked right through until July,” she said, but admitted that there were others that, up to last week, had no bookings at all.

“There are those that are not booked, not even for the Christmas. Some properties have occupancies of 80 per cent and some are at 20 per cent,” she said.

Taylor, though, projected that the more than 8,000 rooms represented by JAVA would, on average, record 50 per cent occupancy levels throughout the season, which starts December 15 and runs through to April 30 next year.

Montego Bay Club Resort spokeswoman, Marcia Williams, was not as optimistic, saying that bookings for the winter months after December were poor.

“The bookings are not that great,” she told the Sunday Observer. “The clientele that we normally get are repeat guests and we have only a handful.” She admitted, though, that most of the hotel’s guests were Jamaicans living here and that they have already booked for the Christmas weekend.

Maud Nunez who, with her husband Prince, owns and operates Falcon Cottages in Negril, had a somewhat hopeful outlook on the season.

“We are really hoping to have a good season,” she said, “but we are not sure what will happen. We have a few (forward bookings) for January and those are looking promising but the other months, we don’t know…”

The couple recently spent $1.5 million repairing the 26-room property and have significantly improved security after a crime was committed there a few months ago.

But the Nunezes would be encouraged by the heavy marketing and promotion of the island that the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) and its local partners have been conducting overseas to capture a share of the resurgent travel market.

One arm of that campaign is a complete listing of all the island’s licensed properties on the JTB website and the properties’ ability to update their own information on the site.

That initiative, as well as a niche marketing campaign, was one of the things that impressed JAVA’s Taylor.

“They (the JTB) have done a fair amount of marketing and advertising for villas and apartments…,” Taylor said. “Right now, villas are one of the primary niche markets that they are working on. So far we are pleased with what has been done and there are some things that are in the pipeline.”

The aggressive marketing has apparently borne fruit for the 49-room Charela Inn along the Norman Manley Boulevard in Negril where forward bookings were described as good.

“The Christmas week is booked up and then it gets quiet, but we think it (the winter season) will be about 15 per cent better than last season’s 50 per cent occupancy level,” Carolyn Kerr, a hotel spokeswoman, told the Sunday Observer.

News from the 80-room Sunset at the Palms (formerly Negril Cabins) was similar, although they were unable to give statistics on forward bookings.

“We are looking at a good winter,” said Evatt Bloomfield, general manager of the hotel’s sister property, Sunset Beach Resort in Montego Bay.

“The bookings are coming in steadily. Sunset at the Palms does get a significant percentage of its patronage out of mainland Europe and to a lesser extent out of the UK and the US and that is a trend that is set to continue throughout the winter,” he said.

Added Bloomfield: “It looks good. It looks bright. We are looking forward to the winter.”