Front desk manager at the Jamaica Palace Hotel on the outskirts of Port Antonio, Portland, Joy Savizon is urging the Government to consider expanding the parish’s cruise ship pier to further boost arrivals in the resort town.

Currently, the pier can accommodate yachts up to 76 metres in length.

“If you talk to any Portlander, they’ll tell you about the cruise ship pier because the pier that we have now cannot take vessels of a certain size.

“Most tourists now-a-days travel on large vessels so they can’t come to Port Antonio and even if they come here they might be docking somewhere else then try to come over,” Savizon told the Jamaica Observer North & East in an interview at the hotel last week.

Savizon also suggested that if the pier could replicate what was there in the 1970s “Port Antonio will take off”.

“It’s simply about infrastructure because no matter how you lobby if the pier can’t take the ship it just can’t.

“They (the government) would have to look at spending a significant amount of money to change the port itself to accommodate the ships.

“When you have that type of port you can now market the parish,” the hotel manager said.

Savizon argued that the parish is now “coming to life” and insisted that the government needed to adjust to the demands being placed on it.

“Port Antonio is now the place to be. People generally go to Montego Bay or Ocho Rios every year but now they are coming to this side of the island,” she pointed out.

“This is the quieter side of the island where you find a different type of tourism and a lot of persons are gravitating towards that.

“Ocho Rios and Montego Bay are more the night life type of tourism. Persons who tend to come to Port Antonio are persons who want relaxation, rest and calmness,” she added.

Montego Bay received the most cruise ship calls at 111 for the first half year welcoming 250,000 passengers, up 41 per cent year-on-year while Falmouth received fewer calls but still held the bulk of arrivals by sea at 440,000 visitors up in single-digit levels year-on-year.

Savizon believes that this could be reproduced in Port Antonio if the government was prepared to invest.

— Kimone Francis