Fri | Mar 29, 2024

Dolphin Cove plans limited reopening of parks in July

Published:Friday | May 15, 2020 | 12:18 AMKarena Bennett - Business Reporter
Chairman and CEO of Dolphin Cove Limited, Stafford Burrowes.
Chairman and CEO of Dolphin Cove Limited, Stafford Burrowes.

MARINE ATTRACTION Dolphin Cove Limited hopes to reopen for business in mid-July, but says the plan rides on the extent to which the Government will allow visitors to enter the island and the destinations to which most of the tourists are bound.

The reopenings will likely see activity at five parks in the chain, but confined to around 20 per cent of the usual service levels, on average, at the start.

The company operates marine parks in six locations, four of which are in concentrated in one parish. In St Ann, there is the flagship Dolphin Cove Ocho Rios, and parks at Moon Palace Jamaica, Puerto Seco Beach and Yaaman Adventure Park; while the others are located in resort capital Montego Bay, and near Lucea in Hanover.

The Hanover facility, which sits on property around which Dolphin Cove has struck a deal with a hotel developer, will remain fully closed for now.

“We have the ability to manage our expenses; it’s like a hotel – when you have low occupancy, you don’t have to open up every room,” said Dolphin Cove Chairman and CEO Stafford Burrowes about the reopenings.

“We are also changing some of the programmes so that its less likely for people to be closely interacting with each other,” he said.

Like many operators in the hospitality sector, Burrowes is keeping tabs on announcements of the phased reopening of tourism source markets, such as the United States and Canada, and also has his eyes on airlines resuming operation following the lockdown.

The lifting of travel restrictions began this week and there are expectations of ramped-up flights in June.

Still, the company anticipates that stopover visitors will be well below normal levels. In a market notice to the Jamaica Stock Exchange, Dolphin Cove notes that local tour operators are expecting 40 per cent of the normal level of arrivals from August to October, and 55 per cent to 60 per cent from the US over the Thanksgiving weekend until the end of the year.

Cruise lines are expected to start departures in the first week of August, with expectation that it will reach 30 per cent of normal call levels for the period September to December.

Game plan being developed

In the meantime, Burrowes told the Financial Gleaner that Dolphin Cove’s commercial team is preparing a game plan to attract customers when business reopens, but that the initiatives are not yet finalised.

“This will depend on if we have more visitors coming from the hotel side or the cruise ship, but it sounds like the hotel will be ready first, but the strategy is not yet finalised,” he said.

Dolphin Cove began seeing a decline in business from as early as February when the Port Authority of Jamaica, which operates the island’s cruise ports, imposed strict disembarkation rules which resulted in long delays for passengers to start their tours and some ships not being allowed to land in Jamaica.

The virus had began spreading in tourism source markets by then, and those measures were meant to keep COVID-19 from entering Jamaica.

By March, revenues of Dolphin Cove further collapsed when Jamaica confirmed its first case of COVID-19, which later resulted in the Government ordering all international airports closed.

As business came to a halt for the marine park operator, the company furloughed some 50 per cent of its staff and placed the remaining team members on shifts, with reduced work hours.

Those team members are responsible for animal welfare and security, both of which are recurring expenditures for Dolphin Cove, even with the parks closed.

“We have done projections to determine the extent to which we will need to access additional cash resources, assuming there is no resumption of operations in 2020,” said Burrowes.

“Fortunately, Dolphin Cove is debt free with a large base of tangible assets and a track record of profitable operations, and we anticipate being able to ride out this crisis and resume operations in due course,” he noted in the market filing.

Dolphin Cove closed its 2019 financial year with net profit of US$1.7 million and assets of US$33.1 million, which includes cash of US$1.5 million. Its March quarter results are pending.

The deal struck with foreign developer Reserve Investments Limited over the Hanover property will see Reserve leasing the 23-acre site for a year, pending planning approvals for the construction of a hotel. Dolphin Cove would continue to operate a marine park there as part of the agreement, which gives Reserve the option to purchase the property.

Burrowes said the developer was in the process of obtaining planning approvals for the hotel.

karena.bennett@gleanerjm.com