Jamaica is getting ready to walk a tightrope between exposing its badly scarred south-west — thanks to the planet’s most destructive hurricane — and inviting tourists to savour the island’s top-class tourism product in the midst of the recovery.

But it won’t be the first time the island will take such a risk, having mastered the act of recovery after the even more deadly COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when it virtually led the tourism world out of lockdown, with little, if any, fallout in the local industry.

And the same hotel group — Sandals Resorts International (SRI) — which put its vaunted brand name on the line after COVID-19, in spearheading the resilient protocols for the regional industry, is again at the forefront, announcing it will reopen five of its eight Jamaican resorts on December 6, a week ahead of the vital winter tourist season.

The day before that, Sandals will stage a townhall that deep-dives into the reopening plans, which will be a demonstration of the courage that turned the resort chain’s Executive Chairman Mr Adam Stewart’s favourite quote into a mantra: “Never waste a good crisis.”

Dozens of other hotels will reopen their doors in areas that were mostly spared by Hurricane Melissa and so were able to bounce back in time to salvage the much-awaited winter travel season.

The message from the island is once again, “Visit us”, as captured Monday in a
New York Times
travel headline: ‘What Jamaica wants after deadly hurricane? ‘Visit us,’ island says.’ Tourism officials will be ecstatic that the article was republished almost instantaneously in Miami’s
Sun Sentinel
newspaper.

Frances Robles’ well-written article did not try to paper over the cracks, but painted a realistic picture of the Jamaica that visitors will see, something the local authorities are agreed on. That is to say, they won’t promise anything they can’t deliver.

The article reported that the storm killed at least 45 people, damaged about 150,000 buildings and homes, and almost crippled the tourism industry, on which the island nation relies for nearly a third of its economy, translating to more than half-million Jamaicans directly or indirectly. Some hotels still do not have electricity and water. About two dozen were too damaged to reopen till 2026, it said.

Still, about 70 per cent of the country’s 35,000 hotel rooms are set to reopen in a matter of weeks, the article quoted the tourism ministry as saying. Their message is: “If you want to support us, visit us. That point is critical for everyone from street vendors to taxi drivers to the owners of luxury resorts.

“As Jamaicans in hard-hit areas clean up the wreckage and repair damaged buildings, tourism officials and hotel operators want international visitors to know that many neighbourhoods are intact,” the newspaper said.

It pointed out that, while the damage was worse on the south-west shore, Ocho Rios saw little if any damage. In Montego Bay, authorities planned to prioritise restoring electricity to the city to speed the reopening of those the storm spared. And Negril’s hotels were largely unscathed.

Jamaica’s tourism industry is undoubtedly confident in the extraordinary level of goodwill the country enjoys, as was demonstrated in the wake of the hurricane. But all Jamaicans will have to do their part to deliver a great vacation to our visitors.