Few people know that my late wife, Sandy, and I once owned and operated, 100 per cent, the hotel business at Bonnie View in Port Antonio. We failed.
Failure is a stern tutor. Ours sent me, somewhat bruised but considerably more curious, back to first principles. Why do some tourism enterprises prosper while others disappear? Who actually captures the value created when a visitor lands, sleeps, eats, swims, tours, shops, tips, taxis, and departs? And, most importantly, how much of that wealth stays where the work was done? Perhaps I cannot escape my training.
I am a physicist. During my doctoral studies, as an OAS Electrical Engineering Research Fellow, I taught university students, co-led electrical theory and measurements, and made certain I ran the laboratories. Measurement matters greatly to me. Accuracy matters. Precision matters. I sometimes joke that the A in Dennis A. Minott stands for Accuracy. So let us measure tourism better.
The immediate provocation is the extraordinary Sandals-Royal Caribbean transaction announced on September 23. Royal Caribbean Group proposes to invest approximately US$3 billion for a 50-per-cent equity interest in Sandals and Beaches Resorts, subject to closing in early 2027. Sandals brings its formidable Caribbean all-inclusive network; Royal Caribbean brings cruises, global distribution, loyalty systems, and enormous marketing reach. That is big business.
But Jamaica’s question should not stop at: How big is the deal? It should be: What happens to the wealth? Take flight with me.
In 2021, Hyatt agreed to buy Apple Leisure Group for US$2.7 billion, dramatically expanding Hyatt’s footprint in luxury all-inclusive tourism.
Travel across the Atlantic and back into our regional marketplace. In 2022, IHG struck a long-term alliance with Iberostar covering as many as 70 beachfront hotels. But notice the architecture: Iberostar retained 100 per cent ownership while gaining access to IHG’s immense distribution, technology, and loyalty platform.
Fly southwest to Punta Cana. Grupo Puntacana did not merely build hotel rooms. Its surrounding institutions developed farmers’ markets, local-product channels, sustainable agriculture, and community programmes intended to connect tourism directly with the people and productive economy surrounding the destination.
Cruise across the Pacific to Fiji. There, an IFC-supported study did something I particularly appreciate: it measured. Cruise tourism’s direct economic contribution and its flow-on effects were quantified, while policymakers examined how greater local participation could retain more visitor expenditure.
Now come home through Aruba and Cabo Verde.
The IMF has explicitly examined tourism leakage in Aruba: imports, foreign-chain profits, overseas promotion, and other outward flows can diminish what remains in the island economy. Cabo Verde offers another warning. World Bank analysis found that heavy dependence on large all-inclusive resorts and imported food can weaken local supply chains and spillovers.
None of this makes foreign investment wicked. Nor does it make all-inclusives villains or cruise ships floating pickpockets.
It means gross tourism receipts are not the same thing as nationally retained tourism wealth.
And here is where I propose something new: the Tourism Wealth Inwards Retention Ratio, or TWIRR.
The TWIRR measures what proportion of the gross wealth generated by tourism is ultimately retained, circulated, accumulated, and reinvested inside the host economy. Not merely how many tourists arrived or how much they spent, but, of every US$100 generated by tourism, how many dollars remain working for us after the first, second, third, and subsequent transactions?
Follow the dollar.
• Did it become wages for a woman in Negril?
• Did her hotel purchase yam from a St Elizabeth farmer?
• Did a Falmouth taxi operator earn it?
• Did a Jamaican manufacturer supply the furniture?
• Did profits finance another Jamaican enterprise?
• Did pension funds acquire productive assets?
• Did government collect taxes that built schools, water systems, and roads?
Or did the dollar quickly depart through imported food, foreign insurance, offshore debt service, management fees, royalties, booking commissions, and repatriated profits?
The Ministry of Tourism already understands part of this problem. Jamaica’s Tourism Linkages Network was specifically established to increase locally sourced goods and services and retain more of tourism’s foreign-exchange earning potential. The TWIRR takes that logic further and turns it into a rigorous national measuring instrument.
Imagine publishing an annual TWIRR for Jamaica. Then calculate one for Montego Bay, Negril, Ocho Rios, and Portland. Compare hotels. Compare cruise ports. Compare investment agreements. Compare us with Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mauritius, or Fiji.
A resident of Speightstown should be able to ask it. So should a fisherman in Havana, a farmer outside Punta Cana, and a craftswoman in Falmouth: How much comes in, and how much stays in?
The Sandals-Royal Caribbean partnership may prove immensely valuable to Jamaica and the Caribbean. But its most interesting metric should not forever remain 50-50.
We should eventually want to know its TWIRR.
Because after counting visitors, ships, aircraft, rooms, and billions of dollars, tourism economics finally comes home to one very human measurement.
How much of the wealth remains where people live and the work is done? Measure that accurately and precisely.
Then let us compete, not just to attract more tourists, but to raise the TWIRR.
Dennis Minott, PhD, is the CEO of A-QuEST-FAIR. Send feedback to: a_quest57@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.
