Trelawny poised for tourism destination status
WITH TRELAWNY poised to be home to 8,000 hotel rooms by 2021, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett believes the time is ripe to endow the entire parish with resort designation.
“I am now at the point where we have to declare not Falmouth, but Trelawny, as the newest destination and resort area of Jamaica,” said Bartlett, who was speaking at Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony of the Ocean Coral Spring H10 hotel, which is the latest addition to the parish’s tourism infrastructure.
According to Bartlett, Trelawny fits perfectly into the destination-assurance structure the Government has created to streamline tourism in the respective resort areas.
‘I want to make the point that Trelawny, in the next three years, will have the second-largest inventory of tourism rooms in Jamaica.’
DESTINATION MANAGER
“The process is begging because the destination-assurance structure that we have established, having established what we called ‘destination areas’, with destination managers, Trelawny will become a destination. Just like we have a destination manager for Negril, Montego Bay, and Ocho Rios, we will have a destination manager for Trelawny.”
On completion, the Ocean Coral Spring H10 hotel will comprise two five-star all-inclusive hotels. The first, which will have 500 rooms, is slated to be ready for the 20192020 winter tourist season, while the second, a 440-room property dedicated to adults only, will be open by the end of 2020.
Trelawny currently has 2,000 hotel rooms, but Bartlett said those figures are rapidly changing with the advent of Ocean Coral Spring H10 hotel of close to 1,000 rooms.
“The advent of H10 will bring with it a number of other investment properties over the next few months,” said Bartlett. “I want to make the point that Trelawny, in the next three years, will have the second-largest inventory of tourism rooms in Jamaica, because the expansion of Royalton is on track and will see another 1,200 rooms, 600 on each side.”
Bartlett also noted that the expansion of the Oyster Bay resort is on track, with another 500 rooms, and the Amaterra Hotel, which will be located just next door to Ocean Coral Spring by H10, will start shortly with 1,200 rooms, coupled with another 2,000 from Harmonization.
“Here we are, in addition to what now exists, pretty close to 8,000 rooms will be in Trelawny in the next three to five years. That will make you the second-largest destination in Jamaica,” the minister said.
“This wave of investment in tourism will be of epochal proportion because it will be twice the size of the first wave that came in the late 1990s and early 2000s twice,” continued Bartlett. “That’s going to require 30,000 more direct jobs and another 100,000 indirect jobs.”