TOURISM PRODUCT IN 2004:CRISES,CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Paul Andrew Bourne, B.Sc. (Hons.); Dip. Edu.



INTRODUCTION



Boxill in a ?'UWI Public Lecture Series' in Montego Bay on ?'Tourism and Development in Jamaica' posited that ". . . tourism is one of the world's largest industries and also that the Caribbean is the most tourism-dependent region in the world" (2003, 1). Blake (2002) concurred with Boxill that tourism is important to Jamaica and Mexico. She said, "Over the last thirty years both countries have experienced tremendous growth within the tourism sector" (Blake 2002, p.64). The tourism-product in respect to tourists is disaggregate into 24 percent from Europe, 53 percent from the United States (Boxill, 2003, 2) and in Jamaica, 70 percent of the visitors are from the US market (Boxill, 2003, 5). With this situation, the Jamaican space of the product must be analyzed from a socioeconomic perspective.

"The economic gap between rich and poor countries has widened over the past ten years. However, to create new industries and to transform rural life in Asian, African and the Caribbean and Latin American countries is a gigantic task. The relevance of tourism to this situation is that income from international travel can bring the foreign exchange essential for major investment. There is a widespread awareness of the potential benefits, but little has been done in practice to provide the means for expansion of tourism plant in most of the developing areas of the world. The potential benefits to developing countries may be apparent to many, but discussion of them is invariably confused. Proponents of tourist expansion in developing countries point to the foreign exchange receipts generated by tourism, or a more sophisticated level, to the impact of these foreign exchange receipts on gross domestic product either directly, or through the operation of the expenditure multiplier. On the other hand, critics of tourism expansion point to the various social strains which are caused by tourism development, example being the distortion of indigenous cultural expressions, the conversion of small farmers into wage labourers due to the high land prices which tourism creates and associated alienation of land, perpetuation of racial inequalities and the erosion of dignity." (Bryden, 1973)


Bryden's analytical outlook provides an in-depth academic assessment of the tourism product, which is within the purview of sustainable tourism development. He has encapsulated the pre-1980 and the post-1980 schools of thought in number of succinctly coined sentences. He offered to the discourse a slant that is primarily non-economic, and void of political misnomers. This astute scholar penned a rationale that disaggregated the contributions, the challenges and the alternatives of the post-1980 scholars. Tourism, therefore, is broader than the all-inclusive properties being publicized by many pre-1980 people (large investors), who continue to advocate for seclusion of the visitors as against holistic tourism product. The product is more than property modernization, its contributions to gross domestic product's (GDP), and the employment of human resources, the needed foreign receipts, and any economic multiplier theorizing that some may argue. As rightfully forwarded by Bryden, the commodity must include the social inequalities, the cultural pluralism that it creates, the social ills (for example, HIV/AIDS), social conflicts due to the perception of beneficiaries, the non-transformation of colonial system in administration of the package and the dislocation of many people from there normal existence. The product within the last two decades is simply not about the ?'glamorous' economic benefits as some argue but the product subsumed the environment, the human resources, the economic activities and the social arrangements of people.

Many authors fail to highlight a number of social issues that have arisen as a result of the tourism product as though the negatives are not apart of the package. The new tourism is highly dependent on the quality of the environment for survivability, and this reality takes with it socio-biological dislocations. Policy-makers in developing countries oftentimes overlook this, which is at the detriment of the society. This article will not conceptualize the tourism product as the pre-1980 scholars but will present an outlook within the vantage point of sustainable tourism development. The author will charter a path for the future and analyze the present aspect of the product as well as review the product up this point.


OPPORTUNITIES



Economic

The single most valued contributor to economic growth and economic development, employment, social services, foreign exchange receipts and taxation revenues to the Jamaican economy leading up to the early1980s was the bauxite and alumina industry [?'56 percentage points of exporting earnings during 1960 - 1975' - (Freckleton, 1993, p.122)]. This twin sector was adversely affected by ?'sluggish' prices in the world market during the period 1975-1988, and this resulted in the declining output of this industry. Prior to the period 1960-1975 the island's major traditional exports foreign exchange earning were in sugar and banana. ?'In case of sugar, export volume in 1988 was 41 % less than in 1975, while banana exports in 1988 were 65% less than in 1975' (Freckleton, 1993, p.122). Since the late 1980s, the tourism industry has overtaken its predecessor in terms of contributions to many economic indicators. The Jamaica economy was undergoing negative external shocks since the 1970s, when the ?'big price increases in oil and other imported goods, wide swings in primary commodity prices' (Girvan, 1993, p.110), and brought with it balance of payment difficulties. Freckleton discovered that during the period 1975-1988 that imports of raw materials stood at 80 percentage points of imports and if this holds constant to day, with the declining in the traditional industries, the island had to diversify its products offerings. This has seen a thrust in direct investment by way of increases in hotel infrastructure development, construction of private dwellings, businesses, and employment generation, increased commercialization in many localities, and a number of changes in rural communities. Many of those areas are in Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril, and they are referred to as resort towns. Resort towns are defined as major tourist areas (Stone, 1999, p.1).

Despite the accelerated growth trends in Jamaica's tourism resort towns, post-1980, there has been an agenda of complaints and criticisms surrounding the spread of benefits (Stone, 1991). From Boxill's presentation at the ?'UWI Public Lecture Series', two important social realities explain the allocation of benefits; this is due to one the all-inclusive market and the typology of the individuals. Boxill (2003) posited, "One very significant factor about the all-inclusive is that it has catered primarily to American visitors" (p. 6). He continued, "Importantly tourists are much more likely to explore the destination on their own and make greater contact with the local communities than the American tourists. Their dollar trends to percolate much more throughout the economy that the American tourists" (p.7). In addition, the ecological costs imposed by that industry on local communities and the domination of the earnings by big hoteliers, and the exclusive all-inclusive hotels, are generating increasingly more resentment on the part of local vendors, craft producers, small entrepreneurs and even hotel workers (Stone, 1991). Notwithstanding those realities, tourism has drastically changed its traditional construct from when it blossomed into existence in the early 1980s. The product now incorporates community tourism, health tourism, eco-tourism, heritage tourism and cultural tourism but many people still place emphasis on the old economic indicators. "A survey of West German travelers revealed, that the experience of nature, clean air and a pollution-free environment were among the most important reasons for taking their main holiday journey in 1986" (Poon, 1993).
Goldsmith (1990) postulated that the benefits of tourism for any developing country are many but he argued within the construct of the pre-1980 school of thought. He argued that the product is analyzed within these themes:

a contribution to the Balance of Payment in the form of hard currency - US dollars, Pound sterling and Canadian dollars;
the dispersion of development to non-industrial regions;
the creation of employment opportunities;
the effect on general economic development through the multiplier effects;
the social benefits arising from a widening of people's interest generally in world affairs and to new understanding of "foreigners and foreign tastes".


Goldsmith's postulation is used as the basis for presenting the economic indicators of the tourism product on the Jamaican economy. Over a decade (1994-2004), the tourists' expenditure from stopover in Jamaica increased by 47.68 percentage points. In 1994, the tourism sector contributed US $973,000,000 to Jamaica's Balance of Payment whereas in 1995, the figure rose by 9.867 percentage points to US $1,069,000,000 and a further increase of 5.519 percentage points over the following year (Table 1). It should be noted that in 1997, the tourist expenditure rose marginally by 1.064 percentage points but a fourfold increase was in 1998 over the previous year. In 1998, the figure for expenditure in Jamaica by stopover tourists showed an incremental increase of 3.09 percentage points over 1997 but drastic increase followed the year after by 8.1 percent. There were two ironies in expenditure by stopover tourists. They were, firstly, in 2001, receipts fell by approximately 8.0 percentage points over the previous year in comparison to a negative 2.8 percentage points change in 2002 over 2001 and secondly, 13.2 percentage points increase in 2003. The latter value represents the highest increase in expenditure and the former indicates the periods with the only negative change.

On a point of emphasis, the Economic Impact Study that was commissioned by the Organization of American States (OAS) and completed in 1994, found that 37.7 percentage points of the foreign exchange receipts that was received by Jamaica is spent directly on imports. Furthermore, the inflows of foreign exchange from the tourism sector have been one major contribution to the Balance of Payments that has aided in the payments for other imported items. Many authors argue that this source of funds has resulted in the provision of employment for many residents, and is responsible for the development of some rural communities. On other matter, the internal migration to many urban centres from rural Jamaica according to some sociologists has been due largely to the downsizing of the bauxite sector, the shift from agriculture to a service oriented economy and the perception of privilege within urban areas. Moreover, in rural Jamaica, presently the tourism industry mainly has been the main employer of people and so this explains the mass exodus of people to the outskirts of resort towns.

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