Tourist board lauds members

Claudia Gardner, Hospitality Jamaica Writer

THE JAMAICA Tourist Board (JTB) honoured 51 members of staff, and 15 former directors and chairpersons, at its 50th Anniversary Staff Recognition Awards ceremony, at the Hilton Kingston Hotel in New Kingston, last Friday, Kingston.

Awards were presented to employees who have served the JTB for periods of 10, 15, 25 and 30 years.

Minister of Industry and Tourism, Aloun N'dombet Assamba hugs Clive Taffe, Jamaica Tourist Board's regional director during the organisation's 50th Anniversary staff awards.

The organisation's longest-serving employee, regional director, Clive Taffe, was honoured for his 40 years of service to the organisation. He was lauded as an exemplary, dedicated and innovative leader who set high standards.

The event's keynote speaker, Reverend Al Miller, head of Whole Life Ministries and pastor at the Fellowship Tabernacle, in his address, encouraged the JTB to "maximize the full potential of tourism", which he said was Jamaica's future.

"The tourist industry was always designed to be the lifeblood of Jamaica's prosperity, we praise God for the bauxite, but it soon run out."

He said, "What you do is of greater significance to the nation than the nation recognises. You are of high value to this nation. You are not to run second or third. We must treat you well as a country, because you represent the face of Jamaica to the world. You are what people see to either attract them, or repel them."

Adding that within the fast changing world that now exists and the JTB closing out 50 years, there was a need to seriously look at the way forward. "I want to suggest to you that service has to be the word for the future of our nation. Service needs vision. We have to develop a servant's heart. We have to think service, and to think service, that means we have to think others first because service is an application of the principles of love."

LOW ROOM RATES

Reverend Miller said the lowering of hotel room rates could help to increase the number of visitors to the island and said that the Ministry of Finance should look at facilitating this venture.

"If needs be, the Government might have to look at how we can help the hotel, dem drop the prices from the construction, give them some incentives so that the room prices not as heavy and then we build up on the attractions," he said.

"We have got to own it (tourism), buy into the concept that this is the lifeblood of the nation, everybody has got to buy in, because until there is a buy-in, we can never maximize our potential to deliver, so buy into it. If we cannot capture the hearts of the visitors, we are in losing a battle in a competitive globalised world."

Among those present at the ceremony were Minister of Industry and Tourism, Aloun Assamba and her junior minister, Dr Wykeham McNeil; director-general of the Ministry of Tourism and Industry, Carole Guntley; director of tourism, Paul Pennicook, and JTB Chairman, Dennis Morrison.