Jamaican entrepreneur, Justin Perez founded his River Rapids Jamaica adventure tour company in 2011 and started doing business in June of that year on the Rio Bueno river in Trelawny.

The excursions involve navigating the river’s rapids and pools in tubes, rafts, riverboards and kayaks through a tropical backdrop of lush vegetation and forests. The tour starts inland and then travels down the Rio Bueno to the sea.

His family already owned the nearby Braco Stables recreation centre in Braco, Trelawny which offers horse riding and hiking tours run by his aunt, Moyra Fitzroy, and Perez wanted to follow a similar course.

“We decided to expand our tour company by adding a second attraction at the Rio Bueno River to primarily target customers at the newly constructed Falmouth cruise port,” he explained.

At that point, however, the family’s business was much different from his career at the time.

Perez grew up in Kingston but moved to Canada in 1995 where he earned a degree in economics from the University of Western Ontario. He also earned a licence to trade stocks and securities.

“From there I did mostly investments in real estate and then moved back to Jamaica in 2009 to start this new business with the family,” he revealed.

Despite his family’s experience in the business, opening a tourist attraction was never going to be easy in a highly competitive tourism environment which also demands fulfilling many requirements and maintaining high standards particularly regarding safety.

“The main challenges in the beginning were all of the bureaucratic obstacles that we had to face in order to get our attraction licence from the Jamaica Tourist Board,” Perez said. “This process took almost two years from the time that we first applied for a licence to when we received it. After receiving our licence, we then faced the challenge of trying to attract customers to our attraction which was very difficult in the first year of operations.”

According to the entrepreneur, River Rapids Jamaica was able to overcome the hurdles of a very competitive tourism market because he was confident that once the attraction opened it would provide customers with a different and unique experience that wasn’t available at any other river attraction on the island.

“In the beginning it was difficult because nobody had been to our river before and there were already a few operators with river tours on the Martha Brae, Great River, and White River, but once people started coming they realised that our river attraction offered a completely different and more exciting experience than the others,” he said.

“Our attraction at River Rapids is very unique in that the Rio Bueno river has a faster flow than any of the other rivers that have tour activities available,” he elaborated further.

“Our attraction also includes an optional waterfall hike, a boat ride into Bengal Bay where the river meets the Caribbean Sea, and a private beach at the end of all river tours where our guests can unwind and enjoy the rest of the day. These additional amenities have helped us to become one of the leading providers of river tubing, rafting, kayaking, and riverboarding activities in Jamaica over the past five years.”

Perez was also convinced that the central location of the Rio Bueno would enable the company to market its tour activities to cruise ship passengers from all three ports on the north coast as well as hotel guests in Montego Bay, Trelawny, Runaway Bay, and Ocho Rios.

It was therefore a matter of patiently staying the course through an expected slow period in the beginning and letting the momentum gradually build.

The fact that his family already had experience and had established important linkages in the market was also of great assistance during this period.

“It was a little easier to establish contracts with some hotel and cruise ship companies based on the fact that our family already had existing horseback riding tours prior to the opening of River Rapids,” Perez said.

The marketing of the business is done mainly through third party retailers who sell the tours and also through Internet marketing campaigns. Positive reviews and publicity on TripAdvisor have also been a huge boost to promotion.

River Rapids Jamaica started in 2011 with three river activities and in 2019 the company now offers five activities on the river and over 15 excursions which include half- and full-day combo tours with other attractions and activities in Jamaica.

“Last year we had approximately 25,000 guests,” Perez declared. “Feedback has been excellent so far and positive feedback from our guests has been the primary driver of our growth.”

Looking ahead, the business owner hopes to see more cruise ship arrivals in 2020 and 2021 because the company’s main market is cruise ship passengers.

“We would also like to attract more local customers which has been a growing market for us in the last 18 months as more and more local guests discover our attraction,” he added. “Large corporate groups are also a market that we would like to expand on because we are now capable of accommodating larger groups of up to 500 people in a day.”

This local client base has been expanding mostly through word of mouth as well as some campaigning on social media.

Perez said the main lesson he has learned since opening the business in 2011 is that in this competitive environment one has to constantly evolve in order to stay relevant. To underscore his point he listed a number of adaptations he has made to the activities at River Rapids Jamaica.

“We added our waterfall climb and some additional activities in the river,” he pointed out. “We shortened some tours for wholesale clients who wanted a quicker tour for full-day combo tours that visit other attractions as well as ours. We are also looking at adding ATVs and a zipline nearby to offer a full range of activities for our customers by early 2021.”

Clearly, the businessman has taken his lessons to heart and is using his experience and newfound knowledge to create a bigger and better tourist attraction that can remain competitive in Jamaica’s ever-expanding tourism industry.