TOURISM AND THE NEW PLANTATION ECONOMY: JAMAICA'S UNFINISHED INDEPENDENCE By Richard Hugh Blackford

Jamaica's Tourism Dependence

In 1979, I picked up a job at GraceKennedy Limited, one of Jamaica’s most significant food trading houses. I was attached to the Hotels, Restaurants & Institutions (HRI) Division, which supplied food and provisions to Jamaica’s rapidly expanding tourism sector. Within six years I was appointed Divisional Manager, and by 1991 the division had become the second most profitable business unit within GraceKennedy. At the time of my departure, annual sales had reached JA$1 billion, with gross profit margins exceeding 38 percent.

This was a period when tourism was widely celebrated as the engine of Jamaica’s economic growth. The hotel sector was expanding rapidly and government policy focused heavily on attracting foreign investment to build resort properties along the island’s coastline.

GraceKennedy itself recognized another emerging pillar of Jamaica’s economy — remittances from the diaspora. The company formed a strategic partnership with Western Union, reducing its dependence on local commercial banks for foreign currency required to finance imports. From a corporate standpoint, these were forward-looking and profitable decisions. But as the tourism industry continued expanding, something troubling became increasingly evident. Jamaica itself was not getting richer.

THE RISE OF THE TOURISM ENCLAVE

Over time, tourism properties evolved into enclaves.Visitors were placed behind high white-painted walls — gated resorts with private beaches, restaurants, bars, entertainment, and shopping facilities designed to ensure that tourists rarely needed to leave the property. Those same walls served another purpose. They kept Jamaicans out; except for the workers.

Businesses outside the resorts; independent restaurants, craft vendors, taxi operators, and entertainment venues began to feel the impact almost immediately. The traditional tourism economy, where visitors walked through towns and spent money with local entrepreneurs, slowly disappeared.

To compensate, cruise tourism was promoted as the next solution, but that too created distortions. Local businesses began competing aggressively for cruise passengers, paying tour bus drivers, taxi operators, and intermediaries a per-head commission to bring visitors to their establishments. In some cases, it became an informal “tax” simply to get a tourist through the door. The visitor increasingly became a target, not out of hostility, but out of economic necessity in a shrinking domestic economy. It was simple; when jobs are scarce, survival instincts take over.

TOURISM AND THE RETURN OF THE PLANTATION MODEL

Forty years later, very little has fundamentally changed. Tourism infrastructure has grown larger and more sophisticated with the hotels are bigger, the beaches more privatized, and the resorts more luxurious. But the underlying economic structure remains disturbingly similar. Tourism in Jamaica increasingly resembles the plantation system that dominated the island prior to emancipation in 1834.

Where sugar estates once occupied the most valuable lands, today large resort complexes line the island’s prime beachfronts, employing thousands of Jamaicans on low wages and temporary contracts that often provide limited benefits beyond occasional gratuities.

THE LEAKAGE PROBLEM

Economists refer to one of tourism’s biggest structural weaknesses as “leakage,” which occurs when the majority of tourism revenue leaves the local economy rather than circulating within it.

In Jamaica’s case, studies suggest that less than 20 cents of every dollar spent on a Jamaican vacation actually remains in the country. The rest leaves through:

Imported food and beverages

Imported furnishings and building materials

Foreign hotel management contracts

Overseas marketing agencies

Debt servicing to international lenders

Profit repatriation to foreign owners

Even in cultural spaces where Jamaica has global dominance, opportunities are often lost. In several Spanish-owned resorts operating on the island, entertainment is sometimes provided by troupes imported from the Dominican Republic, reducing opportunities for Jamaican musicians and cultural performers whose creativity helped make the island famous worldwide.

INDEPENDENCE WITHOUT ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

In 1962 when Jamaica achieved political independence it promised opportunity and economic empowerment for its people. Yet the development strategy that followed often prioritized foreign investment in tourism above the development of domestic industries. It invited large multinational hotel chains to build on Jamaica’s most beautiful lands, providing generous tax holidays and investment concessions to attract foreign capital. In the course of this, many coastal communities lost access to beaches that had long served as spaces for fishing, recreation, and livelihood. The logic seemed simple; bring in foreign investors to build hotels which would create jobs. But the deeper question was rarely asked:

Who truly benefits from the tourism economy?

EDUCATION AND THE CYCLE OF DEPENDENCE

Part of the answer of who truly benefits from the tourism economy lies within Jamaica’s education system, where only about 20 percent of Jamaican school leavers are able to matriculate into tertiary institutions either locally or abroad. For many who do, the disciplines pursued often reinforce the service-based structure of the existing economy rather than developing the technical and industrial capacity needed to diversify it. In many respects, the colonial education model remains intact. During the plantation era, education prepared the majority of the population to serve the plantation economy. Today the system often prepares workers to serve the tourism economy leaving the hierarchy remarkably similar.

THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CROSSROADS

Today Jamaica faces an even more complex global environment, especially given the increasingly hegemonic foreign policy posture of the United States, backed by economic and geopolitical pressures which has created new uncertainties for small Caribbean states attempting to maintain economic stability.

At the same time, Jamaica is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa on October 28, which destroyed nearly 40 percent of the island’s productive capacity, placing enormous strain on government finances and economic planning. These pressures leave the country navigating between powerful external forces and fragile domestic economic structures.

A MOMENT OF DECISION

This moment places Prime Minister Andrew Holness at a defining crossroads. Having secured a third term in office, Holness now has a rare opportunity to determine how his leadership will be remembered. If Jamaica is to break its long-standing cycle of economic dependence, the country must begin pivoting away from the plantation-style tourism model that has dominated its development strategy for decades. That pivot must include:

Expanding technical and vocational education

Investing in industrial and technological capabilities

Supporting creative industries and cultural exports

Jamaica already ranks among the top cultural exporters in the world, with music, dance, and entertainment shaping global popular culture far beyond the island’s size. Yet these industries remain underdeveloped as structured economic sectors. Harnessing this cultural capital could provide a powerful pathway toward economic diversification.

BEYOND THE PLANTATION ECONOMY

For more than three centuries, Jamaica’s economy has been structured around serving external markets. First it was sugar, today it is tourism. The structures as well as the language of development have all changed but the underlying hierarchy often remains the same.

The question now facing Jamaica is whether the country will continue to operate within this modern version of the plantation economy — or whether it will finally chart a path toward genuine economic independence.

Prime Minister Holness now has the time, the political space, and the electoral mandate to begin that transition. History will ultimately judge whether he chooses to do so.