The tourism ministry is not ready to put its Bed ‘n’ Breakfast programme to sleep, although only 44 of the more than 500 available rooms have been booked since homeowners opened up their dwellings to visitors two months ago.

And with the last Cricket World Cup game for Jamaica played last week, participants in this programme will now have to look to a future marketing campaign the tourism ministry plans to roll out in a bid to attract more visitors to the homestay concept.

“If something is not working then it has to be reviewed,” said Gerry McDaniel, director of corporate communications at the tourism ministry.

He said feedback from participants would be used in making the Bed ‘n’ Breakfast programme “a perfect fit for the market”. “.We have to listen to them to determine if it is a one-off instance or a trend,” McDaniel told the Observer.

He reiterated that the programme had not been tried in Jamaica before and as such there were some best practices that could be taken from all over the world, adding that there was no guarantee that it would have the same results as it does in other parts.

“Something that works a particular way in New Zealand won’t work exactly that way in Jamaica,” he said.

According to figures from the tourism ministry, a total of 16 properties were booked for a combined 72 nights, and 94 queries were made by visitors wanting to know more about what was being offered.

McDaniel was also unable to say how many of the rooms went to cricket fans to the island as that evaluation had not yet been done. But he noted that some people did not get guests because that market segment, for which Jamaica was not yet known, was still in building mode.

Additionally, some rooms went without bookings on Unique Jamaica – the official booking agent for the programme – and McDaniel explained that some homeowners got bookings on their own.

“It is usually when Unique Jamaica got bookings and called them to say ‘we have a booking’ that they would say ‘the room is already booked’,” he said.

But while some of the participants in the programme were not turning cartwheels, at least one participant was upbeat about the visitors received.

Opal Nelson, a homeowner in Hellshire, St Catherine, said the programme worked well for her.

“I knew branding was going to be very important so I made sure my house was attractive to visitors when they visited the website,” she said.

She noted that her last visitor who was from the Netherlands, came to Jamaica to attend an academic conference. “He was a very relaxed person so he and my family fitted quite well.”