The first day of the 2024 Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s Caribbean Travel Marketplace, with the Jamaica Tourist Board being a destination sponsor, climaxed with much festivity, fun and food, befitting the occasion.

It was billed as a night of Jamaican colours, but this ‘opening celebration’ turned out to be more than the ‘black, green and gold’. It was a kaleidoscope of colours and shades that clashed at many different levels, making the evening, compered by the affable Terri-Karelle Reid vibrant and exciting.

The late Annie Palmer must have been very excited herself, for it has been centuries, perhaps, since so many colours have exploded on her legendary property. The great house itself looked like a spectre from the soft lights projected on to it. Someone even claimed to have seen Palmer and her daughter looking from a window above. Too much to drink perhaps.

The lawn around her great house was teeming with delegates and other stakeholders who binged themselves on the abundance of traditional Jamaican food and beverages. The sights and sounds were distinctly Caribbean – African drumming and dancing, revellers in skimpy, glittery carnival costumes, stilt-walkers in Jamaican colours, mesmerising fire dancers/eaters, and the scintillating Silver Bird Steel band.

And just when everyone thought Tessanne Chin’s hot and effervescent performance, ending with Hideaway, was the highlight of the night, there was a captivating drone show that almost took everybody’s breath away. But, they all survived to go back from whence they had come at the end of a most fantastic evening.