Not Enough Attractions...Jamaica Fun Farm's Determination to Increase Tourism

ROSE HALL, St James — Prime Minister Bruce Golding has mandated tourism management agencies to widen the search for foreign investment for the expansion of the attraction side of the local tourist industry.

Golding said he was not convinced there were enough first-rate attractions on the island and urged that focus not just be placed on hotel development.


"I am not satisfied that we have enough attractions to keep our visitors as excitingly engaged as we want them to be. We have seen impressive success of investment of attractions that are well-conceived, well-designed and well managed. You think of Chukka Cove, Dolphin Cove, you look at Margaritaville, you look at Mystic Mountain. These are attractions that have done well and are themselves becoming parts of the Jamaican brand name. But there is scope for so much more," Golding said.

To this end, the prime minister has challenged Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett to expand to global levels the campaign for investment in local attractions.

"I want to suggest that there are other frontiers that beckon, that are waiting to be conquered. I have asked the minister of tourism as he goes around the world and as he promotes tourism, and as he promotes investments in hotel development, that he include in his promotions investment in attractions as well," Prime Minister Golding charged.

The prime minister was speaking Friday at the opening of the US$35million Montego Bay Convention Centre in time to host the premier regional tourism trade show, Caribbean Marketplace -- set to take place from January 16-18.

"In so many things we offer a little of this, and a little of that. We can do so much more, we can do so much better than this kind of knick-knacks approach. And it is a challenge that I throw out to the Ministry of Tourism, to the JTB (Jamaica Tourist Board), to the TPDCo (Tourism Product Developent Company) to the Tourism Enhancement Fund, let us expand Ed Bartlett's big thinking," Golding argued.

"Let's look at areas of tourism that perhaps we have never conceived in any serious ways before and let us see what may not yet be within our grasp but within our reach if we simply reach out far enough. Let's do the evaluation, the analysis, let's study the market, let's stretch our possibilities. We're gonna build a strategy to bring not just more tourists to Jamaica, but more tourists of different types, of different interests," he said.