MONTEGO BAY, St James — CHAIRMAN of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), Josef Forstmayr has called for the reopening of the roughly 1,200 hotel rooms along Montego Bay’s ‘Hip Strip’, which have remained closed for several years.

“I really believe that we need to do better and we need to force whatever institutions that own these properties to find investors to put them back into operation,” said Forstmayr, who is also a Director of the Jamaica Tourist Board.

“Right now we have a living cancer that is in the middle of our community and if it isn’t checked it will grow over and take over our city of Montego Bay.”

Forstmayr was referring to a number of properties in the resort city of Montego Bay such as the former Breezes Hotel and Casa Montego Hotel located on Gloucester Avenue, which have been closed for more than four years.

But Minister of Tourism and Entertainment Dr Wykeham McNeill argues that while there is an acute need for additional rooms to grow the sector, these “out of service hotels” along the ‘Hip Strip’ are privately-owned, and for the most part Government’s hands are tied in their quest to get them up and running.

“As a Government we need rooms, we need all properties open and running. It is something that we are pushing. And as much as we can, we try to facilitate and push it. But many of those things are out of our control. In some cases there are issues to do with receivers, in other cases there are owners who are marching to the beat of their own [drum],” Dr McNeill explained.

“But it has an effect on our sector because some of the older ones (closed hotels) are in key positions and if they were opened up, refurbished and brought into real top end, would change the character and help with the branding of Jamaica. So it is something that we are cognisant of, it is something that we are trying to work with, but we as a Government are constrained in these private sector cases.”

The Observer West was unable to contact any of the owners of the properties that once employed hundreds of persons.

Mayor of Montego Bay Glendon Harris concurred that the refurbishing of the “closed hotels” along the ‘Hip Strip’ could go a far way in the plan to bolster tourist arrivals.

“If we have these additional rooms available we will be able to surpass the two million target. As far as it goes, those existing rooms that are locked we need to make a specific injection into those to ensure that they are up and running,” Harris said.

Harris, Mc Neill and Forstmayr were speaking to the Jamaica Observer West at the Sangster International Airport on the weekend ahead of a reception ceremony to mark the first time the destination has welcomed two million stopover visitors in a year.

The two millionth visitor, American Alexis Greiner and her husband, Craig, arrived in the island to attend a wedding.

Meanwhile, the CHTA head who expressed joy over the milestone in the sector, pointed out that all the stakeholders stand to benefit if the roughly 1,200 rooms that are sitting idle along the ‘Hip Strip’ were to be refurbished and brought back into operation.

“It is our properties and we need to ensure that they come back on stream. Because they will be the same hotels that will put the business on the strip, that will populate the restaurants, that will populate the attractions, and that will put shopping in our craft markets,” Forstmayr argued.

He further noted: “Now if those hotel rooms continue to be dead, everything will move on the periphery. Bigger and bigger hotels will be built on the edges of our community and before you know it more and more people will complain that tourism is not doing enough for them.”