Express Catering Limited (ECL), the concession operator at Sangster International Airport (SIA) in Montego Bay, is facing severe financial strain after Hurricane Melissa caused a steep decline in passenger traffic at the country’s main tourist hub.

The company, which reported a 50 per cent increase in quarterly profit to US$1.51 million in August, is now preparing for “a challenging year ahead”, according to its chief executive officer, Ian Dear. This sudden reversal follows a catastrophic 73.4 per cent plunge in November passenger numbers at its primary market, SIA, where traffic fell to 99,100 from more than 373,000 a year earlier, in the wake of the hurricane that devastated western Jamaica. The paralysis of its core market has exposed a critical vulnerability in Express Catering’s otherwise successful business model: A high-cost structure wholly reliant on relentless passenger flow.

The airport operator — Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V (Pacific Airport Group or GAP) — noted that while air operations had resumed, “the destination’s hotel capacity remains approximately 70 per cent affected, which has limited the recovery in demand”.

“The pace at which tourism infrastructure, particularly hotel capacity, is restored will be a key factor for the normalisation of economic activity and air traffic at the destination,” GAP revealed in its November 2025 traffic report.

The financial shock from this collapse has exposed the limits of the model. Just weeks before the storm, Express Catering’s efficiency was its strength; cost controls and fixed-price supplier contracts had driven its quarterly profit to a record US$1.51 million. Yet, these measures offer no defence against a near-total standstill. The company’s financial obligations — notably, long-term concession leases and debt servicing estimated at over US$40 million — do not pause when the halls fall silent.

“Half of our hotel rooms are down… this has a direct impact on our arrival numbers,” Dear said, noting that the scale of the tourism sector’s collapse underpins this standstill. He pointed to a geographic disparity in the recovery, with stronger inventory in Negril and Ocho Ríos than in the heavily impacted Montego Bay region where SIA is located. While highlighting clean-up progress and returning cruise ships, his assessment confirms the direct, mathematical link between shuttered resorts and empty airport terminals — a link now throttling sales across ECL’s more than two dozen SIA concessions.

“All our locations are now open,” he told the Jamaica Observer in an interview Thursday, but described a terminal devoid of its lifeblood: “We don’t see the visitors arriving. We don’t see them coming in through our doors right now.” This reality forced immediate action. “Unfortunately, we have to reduce staff,” he stated, directly linking the decision to the traffic collapse. He added that the company has “engaged a number of financial institutions for support”, signalling an urgent liquidity crisis.

This scramble contrasts sharply with the company’s pre-hurricane strategy, which involved a significant US$5.46 million investment in new brand licences for a domestic expansion — a capital-intensive plan now likely frozen.

That investment represented a fundamental strategic pivot for ECL, which had slashed spending on physical restaurant builds by 93 per cent to instead buy the rights to well-known franchises. The goal, as Dear stated in an October interview with Sunday Finance, was clear: “To expand the revenue base… outside of its traditional business model which has been the airport only. We’re diversifying; that is the objective.” The US$5.46-million gamble was a direct bid to inoculate the company against the very risk that has now materialised.

Profits Evaporate as Fixed Costs Loom

The company’s unaudited first-quarter report for its 2026 fiscal year, ended August 31, shows just how far the business has fallen. In August, it posted a net profit of US$1.51 million on revenue of US$6.79 million. Now, the challenge is purely one of survival: servicing fixed financial obligations—including over US$26 million in long-term lease liabilities and US$14.99 million in borrowings — with sales at a near-standstill.

The financial statements reveal a perilous cash position. As of August 31, cash and bank balances stood at just US$116,173, down sharply from US$496,571 three months prior. The crisis is compounded by a complex balance sheet that includes a US$17.81 million interest-free loan to its parent company, Margaritaville St Lucia, raising serious questions about intra-group financial flexibility during the crunch.

A Protracted Path Hobbled by Image and Infrastructure

The timeline for recovery pits optimism against hard arithmetic. Dear, who also chairs the Tourism Product Development Company, frames a comeback measured in months, not weeks, hindered by parallel challenges: Physical rebuilding and perceptual repair.

“The impact of not having hotels, combined with the global news coverage of the damage, has definitely hurt arrivals,” Dear said. He forecasts that tourist arrivals “won’t really get back up to speed until the middle of next year”.

Beyond the physical rebuild lies a more intangible hurdle: Restoring Jamaica’s image as a ready destination. “I think it may take a while for people to feel comfortable vacationing here while we recover,” he noted. “Right now, potential visitors feel that people are still suffering, which gives them pause.” This perceptual gap points to a critical need for marketing to counter the crisis narrative, he said.

On the ground, the visual evidence of recovery remains a work in progress. A Sunday Finance review found part of SIA’s departure area still under repair behind temporary wooden panels, with damage visible in the solar-panel car park. These scars at the tourist’s first point of arrival underscore the scale of the task.

The official target, championed by Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, is to revive the sector for the critical winter season starting December 15. “We have targeted December 15th as the minister announced, and we’re marketing to get the message across that we are ready for business again,” Dear stated.

However, this ambition collides with a hard physical reality and a year already in decline. While Riu Hotels & Resorts has fully reopened, at least 20 other major north coast resorts have set 2026 reopening dates. The room shortage in Montego Bay will directly constrain demand. Furthermore, airport data reveals a deeper hole to climb out of: after a 1.3 per cent decline for the first nine months of 2025, the November catastrophe drove year-to-date passenger numbers down by 8.4 per cent, or 382,800 fewer travellers. This sets a diminished baseline for the recovery.

For Dear, Hurricane Melissa is the latest blow in a relentless series of crises, each hampering recovery from the last. “It has been a tough five years, to be honest with you,” he reflected, citing the two-year impact of COVID-19, a freak storm in February 2024 that shuttered a key property, and now Melissa. “We are definitely going to rebuild the traffic and come back better and stronger. Our optimism remains.”

His long-term outlook remains bullish, predicting a “record winter 2026 into 2027,” banking on “a lot of global support for Brand Jamaica”.

The Bigger Picture: A Call for Resilient Rebuilding

Beyond his company’s immediate fight, Dear frames the disaster as a national inflection point. He argues for a fundamental shift toward resilient rebuilding, using a personal anecdote as proof of concept.

“Margaritaville Montego Bay did not get any damage. It had a 10-foot tidal surge from the hurricane and there was no damage, because we built that place to be resilient,” he said. “We can build to deal with these type of events but it takes a lot more money unfortunately… We have to ensure that we are ready for the next situation that may present itself. Because we can’t keep doing this.”

This call extends beyond physical infrastructure to the economic model itself. For Express Catering Limited, the hurricane has stress-tested not just its buildings, but its business model. The profitable, efficient operation celebrated in its August report has been revealed as acutely vulnerable to the very climate volatility that now defines the region. The company’s fight for survival in the coming year will be a closely watched case study in whether a tourism-dependent economy can build financial resilience alongside the physical kind.

For now, the focus is on navigating what Dear succinctly termed “a challenging year ahead”. As the destination works to rebuild both its infrastructure and its image, Express Catering’s empty concessions stand as a clear testament to the profound interconnectivity — and fragility — of the tourism economy.

An Express Catering outlet stands empty at Sangster International Airport, where a 73% plunge in passenger traffic after Hurricane Melissa has silenced the usually bustling concessionaire’s halls.