GRATEFUL for minimal damage and the continued generation of revenues in Hurricane Beryl’s aftermath, CEO of Chukka Caribbean Adventures Marc Melville is looking forward to having operations resume in full by the end of the next two weeks.

With its main outposts in St Ann, Trelawny, and Lucea left largely unscathed by the wrath of the powerful Category 4 storm, Melville said tours at each remain ongoing, even as the business powers operations with less than 50 per cent of its staff complement which, at capacity, comprises some 800 team members.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Monday, Melville said that while most of Chukka’s operations were able to resume last weekend, activities at some properties remain scaled down due mainly to challenges associated with the loss of power and road blockages from downed trees.

“All of our locations primarily are up, but in stages. Sandy Bay (Lucea) has nine tours that operate out of it but only five are now open. Seville (St Ann) has three but only one-two are now open; and Good Hope (Trelawny) has six but only two are open. We had no material damage to our plant infrastructure or tour assets but there are lots of trees which are down plus some road damage, all of which we will need to improve to have a better recovery,” he told the Business Observer.

More grateful for the continued bookings and minimal impact to the local tourism sector and most of its players, the CEO said he was confident that following post-hurricane clean-up activities, tours will return fully in short order.

“We are expecting about another two weeks of what we would call less than normal business. Our businesses operate mainly on the north coast so we were not as impacted as the south coast, which was devastated. We do get tourists from Negril and those parishes, but they are usually a smaller part of our business so the impact in revenue fallout will not be as significant for our business,” Melville opined.

What we have seen so far is a less-than-normal start to July for us, we are therefore expecting to see maybe another 10 days of slowdown as we take some time to improve our road conditions, have power restored, regain some amount of connectivity, and to bring back most, if not all of our staff out to work,” he added.

Lauding the resilience of the local tourism product and the year-long boom that sometimes comes with the different seasons, the CEO expressed confidence that the business will do well this summer as tourists continue to flock the island.

“Jamaica has two peak seasons, and the country depends on it. There is December-April for cruise and resorts and the other from June 1-August 30 — and we need the summer season as bad as we need the winter season. The good thing is that we have not really seen a dip in arrival, and that’s very good…it means our communication has been effective in that, yes, we were hit but we are a big island and we remain open. A lot of our hotels, especially the larger ones, are mainly self-sufficient in that they have their own water treatment systems and generators, making it easy for them to disconnect from the grid without much trouble,” he reasoned.

Operating across some six Caribbean territories, Chukka offers a wide variety of adventure tours which range from horseback riding to zip-lining, all-terrain vehicle (ATV) drives, safari tours, river tubing/kayaking, river rafting, power snorkelling, catamaran sails among others.

The privately held business in which Pan Jamaica Group also holds a stake is a significant contributor of revenue to the conglomerates hospitality segment of which Courtyard by Marriott in New Kingston, St Andrew, and ROK hotel in Kingston are also a part.

Solely focusing on recovery efforts at the moment, Melville said the company continues to undertake the necessary expenditure to have the business fully ready by the end of the timed period.

“There are those pre- and post-hurricane expenses and some loss of revenues that we are now dealing with. It’s too early to share a final figure on the estimated losses as we continue to fund a number of expenses. We are, however, grateful that we were able to come through with minimal impact.

“Having survived COVID, which was one on the worst crises in a lifetime, I believe the sector is resilient and will be able to withstand any other challenge. For Chukka, having operations in six territories does help the business as even if we were badly hit there would have been five other legs for us to stand on as we are nicely spread out across the western Caribbean and south as well [as] in Barbados,” the CEO said.