KINGSTON, Jamaica — Tourism Minister, Edmund Bartlett, has welcomed the newly opened Blanche Blackwell suite at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel, saying it will add to the “opinionated experience” of guests.

Speaking at the official ribbon cutting of the suite at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in Kingston yesterday, Bartlett said the suite will, “Help to show the style and ambiance of early 20

^th

 century Jamaica and points to the opulence of the regal society at that time.

The suite is also part of the historic process as well as the cultural assets that have become part of Jamaica’s heritage.”

Blanche Blackwell, mother of music icon and hotelier, Christopher Blackwell, was a Jamaican heiress with heritage in Costa Rica and association with renowned James Bond author Ian Fleming.

 “For tourism, what this suite will do is bring exceptional value to the product. To be in a suite of the mother of one of the most celebrated musical producers of the period is a story that you want to be told and experience,” Bartlett added.

“It will allow an interface with the culture of a period that you never knew.”

The Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel, opened in 1959, is Kingston’s only AAA Four-Diamond rated hotel. It is a luxury boutique hotel providing award-winning accommodations, cuisine and banqueting services to the local and international communities.

 “It is only fitting that this historical suite, where the Hon Christopher Blackwell was born, be unveiled in tandem with the hotel’s 60

^th

 anniversary.

The Terra Nova has become a very iconic city of Kingston tourism facility not just because of the period of architecture that we relate but a lifestyle of Jamaica’s upper class at that time,” said Bartlett.