THIS Emancipation holiday period will prove anything but a dream weekend for many residents of Negril as they reach for the earplugs. The annual Smirnoff Dream Weekend and Appleton Temptation Isle party bonanza rolls into town bringing a cacophony that could wake the dead, strewn debris everywhere, and a town under siege by the young at play. Any notion of noise abatement will have to be put on pause as the Ibiza of the Caribbean gets into high gear and revelry becomes the order of the day… and night.

Residents and police alike are seeking ways to ensure that the renowned party weekend does not disrupt, what is otherwise a sleepy part of the country, too much. The question is, are they prepared to turn a blind eye to the havoc for what proves to be a financial windfall for this time of year? The salmon swim upstream to spawn once a year and the bears know this.

President of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourist Association (CHTA) and Managing Director of Round Hill Hotel and Villas Josef Forstmayr is advocating a solution which can keep everyone happy and continue to ensure that the show goes on.

“Come Emancipation weekend, Negril has a noise pollution problem. These parties are held outdoors and take over the entire community. The party organisers keep saying everybody wants to be outdoors and that it works. Well I like to party too and I go to Ibiza and stay up to the break of dawn. In Europe, particularly in Ibiza they had a similar problem and were losing regular tourism business because the mega open-air parties meant visitors couldn’t sleep. So what did they do? They decided to have these parties in covered clubs on the fringes of town. Thy are all indoors and prove better to manage.”

Forstmayr concedes that this may prove expensive but removes the noise element from the equation. Furthermore it goes a long way in keeping both the residents and police happy and does not cause unacceptable levels of disruption to the town.

“All we need to do in Negril is to put up a warehouse-style structure on the other side of the road. It can have stages, foam machines, chill rooms, and other features that will make the most of the party weekend vibe. In such a structure you can have the music as loud as you want for as long as you want and then everyone is happy. Then you can have planned events on different days of the week and ensure a good revenue stream that doesn’t pay off for just one long weekend a year. This can work very well. It works in Europe. As it currently stands, the Emancipation weekend in Negril is a problem that cannot be ignored.”

Ibiza is an island in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. The island is well known for its summer club parties which attracts large numbers of tourists, but its residents and the Spanish Tourist Office have been working to promote more family-oriented tourism and ensure the riotous nightlife does not unsettle the town. Recently, the island’s government passed a law that sees all nightclubs closing at 6am at the latest.

The Round Hill boss went on to say that Negril’s local government simply put its heads in the sand and has done very little to address this problem. He further added that when Dr Vin Lawrence was the head of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) he tried to persuade him to put up these large structures to house the party weekend and then have them pay for themselves by hosting other events throughout the year, which would see more dollars flowing to Negril.