CINEMA operator Palace Amusement Limited has indicated that it will, at the end of this month, close its drive-in cinema owing to a number of factors, low patronage and profitability being the leading causes.

Director and Marketing Manager Melanie Graham told the Jamaica Observer that while the company is saddened that it will not be able to continue with the facility, it believes the decision was the most appropriate, given the circumstances.

“The reality is that we weren’t having a packed house there to make it able to support itself, so it was not feasible to continue. It also just wasn’t possible, as it has become more difficult to pay staff, rental, security and all the other things,” she said in responding to queries from the Business Observer on Monday.

Graham said that patronage at the drive-in, which averaged fewer than 100 people per night, was nowhere near the hundreds it welcomed at its indoor cinemas. Up to May, attendance at the drive-in averaged 61 patrons per day, which she said further plummeted to almost half the number in subsequent months.

Up to the half-year ended June, Palace’s financial data showed the drive-in cinema contributing approximately $38.8 million of total revenues which closed at $649 million at the end of the six-month period. Consolidated revenues across the indoor cinemas for the period, however, amounted to $545.5 million.

The impending closure of the drive-in leaves Palace with the indoor locations operated across its circuit of cinemas. These include Palace Multiplex in Montego Bay, St James; Sunshine Palace in Portmore, St Catherine; Palace Cineplex in Liguanea, St Andrew; and its flagship Carib 5 cinema in St Andrew.

Graham, indicating that the downturn experienced at the drive-in cinema was not so much a result of the pandemic, said it was more linked to the fact that the indoor cinemas were now all reopened and people prefer to use them. Aside from that she said some structural defects also affected the quality of service the company was able to deliver at the drive-in.

“You can’t control in a drive-in the quality of the picture that you can have, as with an indoor cinema,” she said, further pointing to the nuisances of additional light glares and noise infringements from surrounding facilities as being among the more disturbing effects negatively affecting picture presentation and ambiance at the cinema.

The cinema, located on Dominica Drive in New Kingston, was brought on stream in late 2020 as a response to the novel coronavirus pandemic which called for stringent social distancing requirements. Following the closure of a few or all of Palace’s indoor cinemas at a point, the drive-in also allowed for some amount of business continuity.

Initially the company had hoped to keep the drive-in cinema as a permanent fixture. However, now it has set August 28 as the last day of viewing films at the facility.

Palace, which has only recently started to recover earnings, during the last quarter ended June posted profits of $11.6 million achieved on the back of increased revenues totalling $275 million — almost 60 per cent of pre-COVID numbers and just about 70 per cent of the first three quarters of financial year 2020 before the onset of the pandemic. The country’s sole cinema operator, which before the pandemic saw more than $1 billion in revenues, since the outbreak has had to grapple with a series of losses right up to the fourth quarter of this year when profits rebounded.

Hopeful for a continuation of the company’s recovery, Graham said a number of strategies now being finalised will, in the coming months, further help to strengthen business for the more than 100-year-old establishment.

“Coming up we will be having some really good pictures in the last quarter of this year and so we are really looking forward to that. People are also returning to the cinemas so we continue to thank God,” she said.