Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development – Jamaica The Tourism Industry
chapter IV
matching grant principle), in line with practice worldwide. For businesses that the audit identifies as having no long term future, the priority for subsequent technical assistance must be to help the owners develop exit strategies involving the hotel being converted for alternative use and assistance to help the owner find ways of exiting with minimum liabilities. Thus technical assistance should comprise feasibility studies for conversion and/or assistance from experienced insolvency practitioners. Apart from identifying the unviable, the other main function of screening would be to specify the precise areas of assistance required to reposition the business and restore it to viability. Having arrived at a professional assessment of the prospects and needs of each applicant, there should be a package of technical assistance available covering: marketing & sales support, including identifying and mobilising sales channels; advice on repositioning, including architectural advice; systems development (IT including the internet); organisational change; training of management and workers (company specific); business planning; cost control and overhead reduction; financial restructuring and loan applications. The JHTA has looked at how this technical assistance can be provided and approached a number of donor agencies. It has piloted a training programme. These efforts need to be widened and consolidated. GoJ's aim should be to provide, on a matching grant basis, up to 30 days of technical assistance, drawn from a panel of approved suppliers, across the range of disciplines required. A major requirement for small hotels is support with marketing and sales. They often do not know the market sufficiently to position themselves appropriately and they do not know which sales channels may be able to sell their product to the target consumer. Almost by definition, they lack the resources to undertake sales programmes to intermediaries let alone direct to consumers. As noted in Chapter III above, the use of JTB’s database of tour operators, travel agents and consumers that have expressed interest in Jamaica and the utilisation of JRS’s telemarketing and tele-sales capability, potentially represent valuable assets for small businesses. The rates that JRS would charge for the assistance will need to be determined but they should be highly competitive. JRS should be included in the list of approved suppliers and asked to compete against others also able to offer marketing and sales support. The whole scheme of audits and technical assistance should be open to both small hotels and villas, guest houses and apartments. It should be run by TPDCo. However, all requests for technical assistance in marketing should be referred to the JTB who should be responsible for agreeing the specification of the assistance to be provided and work with the recipient to select the appropriate source of supply. The final part of the Landbase proposal, assistance with raising finance, is also valid. Businesses will need finance to help them reposition and develop their product. However, only a handful of businesses are likely to be strong enough to support significant levels of financing using commercial lending criteria. There would, therefore, be a strong need to make available, through NIBJ or other DFIs, a credit facility to support restructuring of the industry. Money would be exclusively reserved to support viable implementation plans which demonstrate how the finance is going to be used to help the business in its repositioning – refinancing is not
COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT
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