MONTEGO BAY, St James – Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader, Bruce Golding, has called for the repositioning of the island’s tourism marketing strategy to facilitate the more than 10,000 hotel rooms that will be built over the next five years, arguing that failure to do so, would result in significant discounting losses.

“If we are expanding, then we will have to look at a whole new dynamic marketing programme to sustain it,” Golding said. “We are running a risk right now because there is significant increase in the number of rooms, particularly with the Spanish investments, and so if we are not careful we could be running into problems where we will have to discount those room rates significantly, because the marketing programme to support these additional rooms is not in place.”

He added that the marketing programme that is now being used to support and sustain the roughly 22,000 hotel rooms would not to be able to support and sustain the 35,000 rooms that are expected to be available over the next five years.

“It is a whole new ball game, we are talking about a significant additional accommodation and so we are going to need a turbo-charged marketing approach to sustain it,” the opposition leader stressed.

In recent years, several overseas investors – particularly Spanish groups – have been engaged in the construction of thousands of hotel rooms in the north and western sections of the island.

Among these hotels – all of which are expected to reach fruition within the next five years – are:

. the 350-room hotel in Rose Hall, Montego Bay being built through a joint venture between Rose Hall Developments and Iberostar, a Spanish hotel chain;

. Grupo Pinero’s development on a 200-acre property at Pear Tree Bottom, St Ann, where three 600-room hotels are being built under the Bahia Principe brand; and

. the Barcelos Hotel and Resorts 850-room hotel at Oyster Bay, St Ann.

Another Spanish group, RIU, which has two hotels in Negril, has also announced plans to build another in St Ann.

Golding, who was addressing a JLP fund raising dinner for the East Central St James constituency on Friday night at the Three Palms Restaurant in Rose Hall, pointed out that while the investments by the Spanish hoteliers are welcome and have the support of the Opposition, “it must be noted that in their own marketing strategy Jamaica is being used as a destination to enable them to tap into the North American market”.

“They are in fact going into the same market that we traditionally pull the majority of our tourists from, and that suggests to us that we are going to need a new marketing approach in order to ensure that we can bring the additional tourists here to give us the occupancy levels required and be able to do so without discounting our rates heavily,” he said.

The opposition leader also underscored the need for the development of more tourist attractions, arguing that the existing offerings to the visitors are limited.

“There is a need for a whole new approach to attraction development because there are so little offerings for the tourists, particularly at nights,” Golding said, adding that the development of tourist attractions should be approached in the same way hotels are being developed.