Fear Real or Imaginary can be Profitable

Wrote this in 2018 - Not sure why it was unpublished

If there is anything good going on in Jamaica we will never know it because the average Jamaican do not like good news about their homeland and if you try to highlight anything positive they will always counter that with something negative. Bad negative news about Jamaica travels around the world 1000 times faster than any good news because we see good news as a fluke and bad news as the norm. In fact I doubt good news about Jamaica would make it outside of Jamaica.

Fear real or imaginary can be profitable. If you can put the fear of God in people and tell them in order to be safe all they need is to buy this or buy into that, then you would be stinking rich and full of power. Fear is a very valid marketing tool used to herd fearful people into doing what you want them to do. Corporation use fear to force people to buy their product and services. Religion uses fear to grow their congregation and increase the size of their collection plates. Politicians use fear to get votes for power, wealth and glory. If the reasons to be fearful is not real or is being blown out of proportion, delivered for effect then it is a masterstroke in marketing which will have a negative effect on society because fear leads to hate and hate can cause war and genocide. In Jamaica we sell fear because we make money from fear, remittance is based on fear, even getting free phone credit is based on selling fear and suffering.

In the late 70’s and early 1980’s the concept of the All-Inclusive Vacation resort landed on our shores, no thanks to John Issa a local entrepreneur. Before the invasion of the All-Inclusive Vacation resorts Jamaica’s tourism was mainly community base, littered with small to midsize boutique hotels with mostly local stakeholders within the community playing a big part in the tourist industry. It was within the interest of the community to preserve the industry and as such the community shared in its profits.

Community Tourism was counterproductive to the concept of and future of the All-Inclusive Vacation resort. Community Tourism was taking money from the huge foreign owned corporation. For the All-Inclusive Vacation resort to survive, Community Tourism must die and die it did. There are no statistics to prove that community tourism was a threat to lives of tourist because crime against foreign visitors to Jamaica has always been low. This did not stop them from using crime against tourist as the major marketing tool to kill the concept of community tourism. In the late 70’s and early 80’s I remember how farmers, fishermen, bakers and various small business people use to come to the hotels to supply local goods and service because back then tourism was a real linkage industry. Tourism back then supported the community and the community supported tourism. Even the political violence of the 70’s where about 800 Jamaicans lost their lives, tourist visiting the island was relatively safe this violence did not affect the tourist.

To kill the concept of Community Tourism fear was used, fear of the Black planet, fear of black violence, fear of dying at the hands murderous black people became a valid marketing tool. It was a huge discussion in the early days of the All-Inclusive Vacation resorts and many stakeholders of Community Tourism tried very hard to counter the message that says, if you wanted to survive your vacation in Jamaica then you must imprison yourself behand foreign owned gated All-Inclusive Vacation resorts. To survive you must isolate yourself from the society, the culture and the people. The advocates of Community Tourism did not stand a chance because most people who engaged in this form of tourism were ordinary local Jamaicans with limited resources and the people who owned most of the All-Inclusive Vacation resort were huge foreign corporations able to throw money at travel agencies. In many cases they owned the travel agencies and can control the narratives. Tourist was told that it was dangerous to venture out into Jamaican communities and that local Jamaicans were murderous.

The tourist industry then became isolated from ordinary Jamaicans. It became a country within a country. Visitors were picked up from the airports in coaches, taken directly into the All-Inclusive Gated Community and when their vacation was over they were taken back to the departure lounge of the airport. All the wealth from tourism was also isolated from society. Many a time’s the visitor’s payment did not even make it into Jamaica as it was collected overseas for a vacation in Jamaica. By the early 90’s spotting a tourist on the street in Jamaica was like spotting gold, mobbed by vendors trying to sell rubbish and to the scarce and scared tourist, who by now was skeptical of the local community this was reason enough to follow the advice of the travel agent. The aggression to make a sale increased with the growth of the all inclusive hotels and the scarcity of the tourist.

Who came first? The Chicken or the egg? 

The All-Inclusive resort was a 50’s British invention but in Jamaica the political violence of the 1970’s provided the framework for its introduction on the island. The political violence helped to create the narrative for isolation of the Tourist industry and isolation of the wealth it generates. This isolation retarded the social and economic development of Jamaica and made a bad situation worse. One can also say that the lack of social and economic development led to the increase in violence, thus justifying the narrative of the All-Inclusive resorts. To isolate the tourist industry is to isolate the people from their livelihood, to break the chain of the linkage between things like farming, fishing and various sectors to tourism because the industry was supposed to consume local output and help community development and grow.

Like British Colonialism, the tourist industry, the all-inclusive resorts and the foreign corporation who owns them were not good corporate citizens and felt no connection to the country and people who help them to generate massive amount of wealth. In a lot of tourist parishes and some of the small towns across Jamaica we have some of the worst poverty. Where we have huge corporate own hotels, they contribute very little to lives of the people because there is little or no connection between the mom and pop businesses to the hotels, so those businesses die.

What we spend many decade destroying we will have to spend many more decades trying to rebuild. Telling people to turn away from crime and back to linkage industries where they can earn a decent living.

“Sandals Resorts International (SRI) has commended Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett and Agriculture Minister Audley Shaw for what it described as an “exciting initiative” to ensure that more locally produced items are consumed by the hotel sector as opposed to imports. SRI Chairman Gordon “Butch” Stewart has urged his fellow hoteliers to support the call to buy local first, saying that it will not only create a huge impact for the sector, but have significant economic gains for the country as a whole.”

This is the year 2018 and we are still trying to create initiatives to get Jamaica’s Tourism Sector to consume locally produce food from Jamaica’s Agricultural sector. So where was your civic pride all this many decades ago? It is about time Jamaica Tourist Industry start using local produce but this should have been the NORM not the exception. The fact that it is 2018 and you are making a big deal about something you should have been doing by default. This is shameful and disgusting.