NEGRIL, Jamaica — With power still out nine days after Hurricane Melissa swept through western Jamaica, Kellanie Kerr stood in the dark at the stifling hot souvenir shop in Negril where she works, waving a fan at her sole customer.
She tried to “guesstimate” how dependent Negril, a beach town on Jamaica’s far west coast, is on tourism.
“From a scale of 1 to 10? Ten,” she said. “Or maybe 100, because that’s what we use here to survive.”
Kerr is one of the more than 500,000 Jamaicans whose jobs depend directly or indirectly on tourism in the Caribbean country that, in October, was battered by its first Category 5 hurricane.
The storm killed at least 45 people, damaged about 150,000 buildings and homes and crippled the tourism industry, which the island nation relies on for nearly one-third of its economy.
With dozens of hotels wrecked by the storm’s extraordinarily fierce winds and deluges of water, Jamaican authorities are rushing to reopen tens of thousands of hotel rooms in time for the crucial winter travel season. Tourism authorities announced that the country would be back in business for visitors by Dec. 15, which the government considers the start of the season, an ambitious goal that many hotels said they would not meet.
Some hotels still do not have electricity and water. Others were too damaged to reopen.
Still, about 70% of the country’s 35,000 hotel rooms are set to reopen in a matter of weeks, according to the tourism ministry. Jamaican tourism officials and hotel operators are desperately pushing the message: “If you want to support us, visit us.” That point is critical for everyone from street vendors to taxi drivers to the owners of luxury resorts.
As Jamaicans in hard-hit areas clean up the wreckage and repair damaged buildings, tourism officials and hotel operators want international visitors to know that many neighborhoods are intact.
While the damage was worst on the southwest shore, Ocho Rios, a key tourism destination on Jamaica’s north coast, saw little if any damage.
In Montego Bay, a northwestern city that is Jamaica’s most popular tourism destination, a number of hotels were damaged. Authorities planned to prioritize restoring electricity to the city to speed the reopening of those the storm spared.
While the electricity was off for several weeks in Negril, its hotels were largely unscathed.
Sandals, a Jamaica-based company that has eight all-inclusive resorts on the island, said it would reopen five on Dec. 6, but three, including its flagship property in Montego Bay, will remain closed until at least May.
Edmund Bartlett, the minister of tourism, said the industry lost about $62 million just in the first week after the storm.
About 40% to 50% of the country’s hotels suffered at least some damage. Nearly two dozen hotels will not reopen until 2026, according to the tourism ministry. But Bartlett said he hoped that by the end of January, 80% of Jamaica’s hotels will be reopened.
“Two-thirds is still active and productive,” Bartlett said, referring to the hotels expected to open in mid-December. “I think that point has to be made a little stronger — that the impact has been on the western part of the island.”
But that’s also where much of the tourism is concentrated. Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, which was not damaged, is in the east — but it is not typically a beach destination.
Christopher Jarrett, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, said the ability of hotels to reopen depended not just on the extent of their damage but also on when they got water and power back. Jarrett, who owns two hotels in Montego Bay, is a member of a tourism task force formed to help the industry cut bureaucracy and accelerate recovery.
The COVID pandemic essentially shut down Jamaica’s tourism industry, but it had largely managed to bounce back. The outbreak, however, did not wipe out utilities, Jarrett noted.
Nearly one-third of Jamaica still has no electricity, though about half has been restored to Montego Bay and parts of Negril.
“Let’s be realistic: Right now it’s not a pretty sight on the west coast,” Jarrett said.
Jason Henzell, owner of Jakes, a family-owned hotel in Treasure Beach, said one-third of the rooms at his southern coast property were usable. Another third were in bad shape, and the remaining third were “very bad.”
“I have never seen concrete bend in a hurricane before,” he said, looking at the smashed oceanfront honeymoon suites.
But he hopes to open by Dec. 18 and has received calls from loyal customers who plan to come — and bring power tools.
“It’s essential for persons to know Jamaica is open for business,” said Henzell, who chairs the south coast chapter of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association.
Jeremy Jones, regional managing director for Sandals, acknowledged that it was going to take some hotels more time.
“You don’t want to put a product that’s not 100% back on the market,” he said. “You’re going to damage your brand more than anything else. ‘You told me it was great, and now I’ve come, that’s what I’m seeing?’”
Even hotels that suffered little damage — like the Sandals in Negril — had to grapple with the dozens of workers who lost their homes. More than half the staff at the three hardest hit Sandals hotels were displaced, Jones said.
For most hotels in western Jamaica that means efforts are underway not just to fix the hotels, but to also repair the homes of their employees.
Jones said Sandals would use this time to refurbish and refresh hotel properties, making them more resistant to hurricanes.
“Definitely different kinds of roofs,” Jones said. “The slab roofs that stay on? We’re going to probably do more of those.”