EXPRESS Catering Limited (ECL), the company that manages more than two dozen food and beverage operations at Sangster International Airport (SIA) in Montego Bay, is facing financial strain as passenger traffic at its only market plunged following Hurricane Melissa, company officials and data show.

Passenger numbers at SIA, where the outlets operated by ECL include Starbucks and Domino’s, fell 73.4 per cent in November from a year earlier to 99,100, data from airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico shows.

The steep decline comes just months after Express Catering reported a 50 per cent jump in quarterly profit to US$1.51 million in August. Chief Executive Ian Dear told Jamaica Observer in an interview Thursday, the company is now bracing for “a challenging year ahead.”

The collapse in demand is directly linked to extensive damage across Jamaica’s tourism sector. The airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP) noted that while flights have resumed, approximately 70 per cent of hotel capacity remains affected.

“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 stated in its November traffic report.

“The impact of not having hotels, combined with the global news coverage of the damage, has definitely hurt arrivals,” Dear said, confirming the dual challenge of physical rebuilding and reputational repair. This bottleneck has driven broader declines; the poor November drove year-to-date passenger numbers at SIA down by 8.4 per cent.

For Express Catering, which relies entirely on passenger throughput at the airport terminal, this translates into the immediate challenge of managing a high-fixed-cost model during a period of severely reduced revenue. In response, Dear said the company is focused on operational efficiency and securing financial stability.

“We’re making all of our operations as efficient and aggressive as we can to try and make sure that we protect any revenue and improve revenues from every single passenger that comes through,” he told Sunday Finance.

This intense focus on airport efficiency comes as the company’s longer-term strategy to reduce its reliance on SIA has been paused. This strategic freeze halts a calculated pivot, detailed in a report by Jamaica Observer in October, which outlined that ECL slashed spending on physical restaurant builds by 93 per cent to instead invest US$5.46 million in acquiring brand licences for a domestic expansion outside the airport.

That focus on efficiency had been the hallmark of its recent success. 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 on revenue of US$6.79 million. Yet, these measures offer no defence against a near-total standstill.

“Half of our hotel rooms are down… this has a direct impact on our arrival numbers,” Dear said, noting that the scale of the fallout on the tourism sector impacts his own operation. “I think it may take a while for people to feel good enough that they can come on vacation while we’re recovering,” Dear noted, “because right now they feel that people are still suffering and so people are a little unsure about whether they want to come on vacation in Jamaica right now.” He forecasts that tourist arrivals “won’t really get back up to speed, we feel, until the middle of next year.”

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 Sunday Finance, 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 has forced immediate action. “Unfortunately, we have to reduce staff,” Dear said, directly linking the decision to the traffic collapse.

He confirmed the company has “engaged a number of financial institutions for support,” a process he described as ongoing. As of August 31, cash and bank balances stood at just US$116,173.

For Ian Dear, Hurricane Melissa is not an isolated disaster, but the latest and most severe event in a brutal five-year period that has continually tested the company’s endurance. In an expansive interview, he framed the current crisis within this relentless sequence.

“It has been a tough five years, to be honest with you. It’s been two years of impact by Covid and we’re still trying to recover from that. [In] February of 2024 we had a freak storm that closed down Margaritaville, Montego Bay and also took out the pier in Ocho Rios which had a dramatic impact on our business, and now Melissa,” he recounted. D

espite this history, Dear’s stated posture is one of determined resilience.

“We are definitely going to rebuild the traffic and come back better and stronger. Our optimism remains,” he stated.

Moving beyond his company’s immediate triage, Dear leverages the catastrophe to advocate for a fundamental, nationwide shift in how Jamaica approaches development in an era of climate volatility. He uses a potent, personal example 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 types of events but it takes a lot more money unfortunately, but I think it’s marginally more to be honest with you,” he argued, making a case for upfront investment in durability.

His call to action extends to the highest level of national planning: “What I do believe is that as a country we must make a decision… we must build back our infrastructure to be more resilient to withstand the fact of what’s happening around the world… We have to ensure that we are ready for the next situation that may present itself. Because we can’t keep doing this.”

Despite the grim short-term outlook he has outlined, Dear’s long-term conviction in the underlying strength of “brand Jamaica” and his company’s place within it is resolute and specific. He carefully distinguishes between the difficult recovery phase and the ultimate destination.

“Honestly, my outlook is that 2026 may be a bit of a challenging year ahead because we’re building back the numbers…” he concedes.

However, he immediately pivots to a bold prediction about the horizon beyond the rebuild.

“I really do honestly believe that we are going to have a record winter 2026 through 2027. There’s a lot of global support for brand Jamaica.” He reiterated this supreme confidence for emphasis: “But I do really believe we were going to have the best year ever and you can quote me on that, in winter 2026 through year 2027.”

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.