As hotels reel, sly Fox adapts
Published:Sunday | May 17, 2020 | 8:56 AMPaul Clarke/Gleaner Writer
Rooms hollowed by the coronavirus disease are telltale signs of its debilitating effect on the tourism sector, with small hotels and Airbnb operations victims of the economic headwinds.
Virtually all the small hotels and guest houses a Gleaner roving team visited in the Irish Town-Blue Mountains corridor of rural St Andrew yesterday were closed to the public.
The disruption in the tourism industry, one operator said, was causing major worries for employers struggling to retain staff.
At least two operators say they are determined to battle through the pandemic with hopes of better days well off in the distance.
The popular Strawberry Hill, renowned for its fine food and breathtaking vistas, is one of those now closed.
Ricardo Bowleg, the hotel’s general manager, said that the property, like others in the hilly hinterland, has been badly hit by COVID-19.
“There is a gradual scaling down of operations here, and this situation has led us to lay off approximately 70 staff,” Bowleg noted.
“We did manage, however, to honour our booking obligations at the start of the outbreak on the island as we are based on our food and beverages, but unfortunately, with the situation the way it is, we cannot operate like that, so we were forced to slow down,” he said.
OFFSETTING LOSSES
Michael Fox, proprietor of Mount Edge Guest House, Eits Café, and Food Basket Farm – a three-in-one establishment nestled in the cool Blue Mountains – said he was forced to adapt a new strategy to ensure some amount of activity.
Fox has mitigated his losses by taking in monthly-paying guests.
“These are foreigners who are stranded in Jamaica because of the virus and the country being on lockdown,” he told The Gleaner yesterday. “What we have done is to reduce the usual rates and give them a monthly rate.”
Fox has also been aggressively pushing home deliveries of produce from the Food Basket Farm to help offset the loss of tourism revenue.
“The money we get from that is not great, but at least it keeps the business going. It pays the light bill, and we try to give each staff member a couple days off also, through rotation, instead of sending home indefinitely.
Despite the tweak in operations, Fox’s guest house is effectively closed to the public except for a family of three who cannot return to France because of COVID-19.
“What we are doing right now is to use this period to do whatever little fixing and sprucing up of the place in the hope that when things return to some form of normalcy, we won’t be left behind,” said Fox.
He said he routinely had about 50 per cent occupancy before the COVID-19 outbreak. Mount Edge did brisk business, especially at its restaurant, Fox said.
“When the cruise ships started coming to Port Royal, we had a lot of those tourists coming here. But now we face a devastating downturn in business that we will still have to make use of in one way or another,” added Fox, who co-manages the business with his daughter, Robyn.
Several other hospitality ventures, including the Raf Jam Bed & Breakfast, Serendipity Holistic Resort and Spa, and the Blue Mountain Guest House, have shuttered.
Jamaica’s tourism sector is projected to lose $76 billion from the downturn in global travel, but that forecast is expected to be revised upwards.
The island welcomes more than four million visitors a year.