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Two new Karisma hotels for Jamaica by 2023

Published:Saturday | November 16, 2019 | 12:27 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

Two new Karisma hotels will open in 2023.

Speaking at the just-concluded Caribbean Hotel Investment Conference and Operations Summit in Montego Bay, Beccera said the 226-acre property has been divided into 10 lots, with four already secured between the Karisma Hotel group and another company under contract.

“We, at Karisma, are going to build two hotels which will open doors in 2023, but we have only six lots left, for we are actively seeking investors,” said Ruben Beccera, vice-president of corporate affairs for the Karisma Hotel and Resort Group.

“It will be a very beautiful complex; it is not branded Karisma, but we will have our own hotels in there, and we are open for business where investors can now come in and develop the other six lots,” said Beccera.

Construction of the five-star hotels, which is set to start in the first quarter of the 2020-2021 fiscal year, will take 18 months.

In September, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett announced that the Government had finalised the sale of approximately 300 acres of state-owned lands in Salem, St Ann, to the Karisma Hotel and Resorts group.

SUGAR CANE BAY ACQUISITION

Karisma plans to build 10 hotels over 10 years, with a total of 5,000 rooms, which are expected to create direct employment for 10,000 Jamaicans.

The acquisition of the St Ann property, now known as the Sugar Cane Bay Jamaica Development, reportedly fits into Karisma Hotels’ plans to operate 35 resorts worldwide by 2020. It is also aimed at capitalising on ongoing tourism growth in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.

Speaking at the summit, Bartlett welcomed the start of the project as a major step.

“This announcement today is the culmination of all the developmental and approval processes that had gone into finally making the Sugar Cane Bay project a reality in Jamaica,” said Bartlett.

The Karisma Hotels group has 26 properties in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe under several brands, including El Dorado, Azul, Generations, Sensatori and Nickelodeon.

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