MINISTER of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has challenged local investors to pay more attention to developing benefits from using the Blue Ocean Strategy, which is aimed at resetting the sector.

Bartlett, who was the main speaker at Monday’s launch of the 2023 annual Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival, noted that while there is worldwide appreciation of Jamaican coffee as an acclaimed beverage, consideration must be given to the fact that it also has enormous properties for its huge value chain.

The Blue Ocean Strategy involves simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost so as to open up a new market space and create new demand. It is also about creating and capturing uncontested market space, making the competition irrelevant, and is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not a given and can be reconstructed by the actions of industry players.

“And, if we really look into the value chain of coffee and its many derivatives, we could create an entire colony around [Jamaican] coffee — and that is perhaps an ambition that we will work towards,” Bartlett told dozens of guests and tourism, business, and agricultural stakeholders attending the launch of the festival in the Edward Seaga Suite at Devon House in Kingston.

He added: “The purpose is to engage ideas, to convert ideas into material things which have a value and accreditation…We want to become an international event, so in challenging the investors to come on board now to invest in the coffee festival we will be marketing through the Jamaica Tourist Board and its platform.”

He said it is an ambition the Government is working towards which had been addressed with the conceptualisation of the Blue Mountain Coffee Trail in 2017, revealing wonderful scenes and centres for the development of gastronomy and which has maintained government support since 2018, totalling over some $100 million to the Blue Mountain Coffee Festival .

In May 2021 the minister had argued that the Blue Ocean Strategy would play a major role in resetting the industry, noting that it calls for the creation of business models that depart from traditional models, based on competition and standardisation.

“It will see our ministry pursuing enhanced value creation through product differentiation and diversification, which will allow destination Jamaica to open up new markets and create new demand in a unique and uncontested space,” he noted then.

He also indicated that with the Blue Ocean Strategy, the production and consumption pattern of local tourism will improve to a higher level of retention of the US dollar in the Jamaican space, while creating more jobs.

“We go in with the proposition that it is absolutely inevitable,” Bartlett added. “It is a proposition that the world wants, it is a proposition that is unbeatable — and it is a strategy that has remained with us to grow and grow and during difficult times.”

Bartlett further noted that the strategy has been the policy for the Jamaican tourism sector to grow and grow during difficult times, which has been credited to its own accessibility.

“That’s why we were able to grow every year for three consecutive years, averaging three per cent in the worst recession the world has ever had,” he said.

“We have a product that can, by itself, be marketed. What we need to make sure of is that we develop the entrepreneurial capacity to carry it through and [that] it will bring thousands and thousands of people to Jamaica, annually, for the coffee festival — and that is what I want to see,” he added.

He said he is inviting investors from home and abroad to meet the challenges that may arise.

“In fact, if we can’t get local investments, we no longer aim to go look investments because this festival must not be a simple event that we have every year. It must be an international event that brings in thousands and thousands of people to Jamaica, and provide income and revenue for the country and the well-being of our people,” he added.

He pointed out that there was a two-year timeline for the achievement of the goal of passing on the coffee festival to private interests who may be interested in the process.

“Because this is what I am about. The private sector is the engine of growth and Government is about the facilitation of that growth process — I want you to bear that in mind. Let’s make this a signature event that invites the world to Jamaica every year,” he concluded.

Other speakers at the launch included Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Pearnel Charles Jr; Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Senator Aubyn Hill; and the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Jennifer Griffith. The host was Nicola Madden-Greig, chairman of the Gastronomy Network.