Really sly cartoon depicting the Densham Community Tourism Aerodrome in the Observer. Smiles all around and Jason looking fly.
www.jamaicaobserver.com/tools/cartoons/ed-cartoon-jan-05-2011
Too funny for words.
Brilliant. Hope someone at The Observer doesn't lose his job. I thought people like Jason were hands-off. Nice to know he's fair game.
Kudos to the cartoonist.
Clovis...the Observer Cartoonist
hahaha...no worries of Clovis or his editors loosing their jobs.
The Observer is owned by Butch Stewart (Sandals), who is unapologetic for the support of "patriotic" business interests, even as it let the late John Maxwell loose to pursue controversial environmental & socially relevant issues.
The cartooney details of the Island Outpost's Community Tourism Aerodrome is very tongue-in-cheek and a good natured ribbing of its Prez, Jason...and a big-up pro-jection.
Observer Letter to the Editor Taking On Clovis:
www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/Who-is-going--to-Clovis--Clovis-_8239562
Luxury travelers now have a new reason to travel to Jamaica in the wintry months with the construction of two new airports for light craft and private jets.
On Dec. 16, Island Outpost's Jake's Resort opened a new private grass airstrip, the Lionel Densham Aerodrome, which will serve four and six-seat single-engine aircraft to and from Kingston, Montego Bay, and other Island Outpost properties.
Flights are included as part of the resort's VIP flight and stay packages.
Meanwhile, on Jan. 12, the site formerly known as the Boscobel Aerodrome will re-open as the Ian Fleming International Airport, serving private jets and small commercial aircraft with space for six international and three domestic planes.
(from Robert Curley's Travel Blog)
On Dec. 16, Island Outpost's Jake's Resort opened a new private grass airstrip, the Lionel Densham Aerodrome, which will serve four and six-seat single-engine aircraft to and from Kingston, Montego Bay, and other Island Outpost properties.
[edited by TB.Net]
BECAUSE HE CAN.....HAHAHA,,,it is a tourist area no?
I don't understand this. Is the writer implying Kingston and Montego Bay are Island Outpost properties or should the writer have had someone edit his words to make them accurate?
Flying into Jamaica: The Next Cayman
Excerpted from William Spear's Article in Spear's Salon
If the likes of Panama, the Cayman Islands, St Kitts and the Turks and Caicos Islands can reinvent themselves as flourishing offshore tax havens, then why not Jamaica?
Making Jamaica a centre for offshore banking and High Net Worth Bank Accounts could very well work as a strategy. Jamaica has a much better (and better-developed) onshore banking infrastructure than probably anywhere else in the Caribbean, boasting its own stock exchange and hundreds of financial-services firms.
The Minister (of Tourism Bartlett) is hoping this will attract the High-Net-Worth (HNW) ‘tax-conscious rich’ to Jamaica, just as the country did before the war and until the early Sixties, when the likes of Ian Fleming, Noël Coward, Errol Flynn and a small army of millionaires and celebrities regarded Jamaica (in particular the Port Antonio coastline ...) as Mustique or St Barths is today.
Montego Bay’s airport — Sangster International Airport...is one of the recent success stories of Jamaica, after over US$200 million was spent to make it one of the sleekest and most modern in the Caribbean.
The airport, which can handle 9 million passengers a year, is a gateway to the US, South America and Europe.
There are several daily flights to London and New York and the airport also boasts probably the most luxurious private jet terminal in the Caribbean.
‘And (according to Bartlett) we are currently building another private jet terminal inland. We want to make getting in and out of Jamaica as easy as flying from London to Switzerland or Monaco.'
...despite the global recession and tourist numbers being hit, the country is benefiting from a luxury real-estate boom... a $50 million property and hotel development is just being finished by former Island Records owner and now Island Outpost Property entrepreneur Chris Blackwell at his Goldeneye Resort (which houses the old villa of Ian Fleming, which Blackwell also owns), located in Oracabessa, St Mary.
Reopening this October, the Goldeneye is a luxurious compound of private villas with private beaches and ‘spectacular tropical gardens’, which they hope will appeal to today’s island-hopping jet-set crowd who want something more intimate than the St Tropez atmosphere of St Barths.
"There is a unique lifestyle to be enjoyed here; it’s romantic and such a delightful place to live. This is a rich man’s resort. I’m a real-estate developer but I’m also — here — in the tourism business. You have to look at the numbers. You need to look at the airport “lift”. There are 300 direct flights a week into Montego Bay airport, making it one of the easiest in the world to get to from US cities east of the Mississippi." (MoBay's Palmyra Resort tycoon developer Bob Trotta)
...‘most of Jamaica is as safe as Switzerland for tourists and business travellers’
‘The trouble is the media always only focus on the gangland problems of Kingston and they don’t realise that the rest of Jamaica actually has a lower crime rate than Antigua or Barbados. There is hardly any crime towards tourists or white people.’ ( Ja Minister of Tourism Bartlett)
www.spearswms.com/tax-and-trust/20757/rum-business-or-jamaican-fizz.thtml
Prime Minister Addresses Unique & Wider Scope of Heritage Tourism...Is TB A Model?
Gleaner (10•1•2011):
Prime Minister Bruce Golding says he is not satisfied Jamaica has enough attractions to keep visitors excitingly engaged.
"What brings visitors to Jamaica are not the fabulous hotels, nor the fabulous cuisine, it is the people," ... adding that there is something about Jamaican people that endears others, "So much of it comes out of our culture, there is a mystique about us" ...
At the risk of offending the many all-inclusive chains across the length and breadth of the country, Golding said, tourists come to Jamaica for rest and relaxation, but that does not mean that they want to be locked away in a hotel room undisturbed.
Borrowing from the popular term, 'We are more than a beach, we are country', he said whatever can be done to expose the visitors to get out and have a good time should be encouraged.
"The Story of Jamaican Tourism has not yet been fully written, there are new chapters to be written, and it has been reading well so far, let us continue to build this fabulous story that we call Jamaica."
SOURCE:
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110110/news/news2.html
Jamaica is not nearly as upscale as many islands known to be offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands, St Kitts and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The kind of people who frequent those islands are not necessarily the types of visitors Jamaica attracts. The Palmyra, for instance, is not selling units anywhere as quickly as forecast, and the developers are spending a lot more time and money trying to achieve their sales goals. The Ritz Carlton in MoBay runs special after special to even fill its rooms.
Jamaica has an identity crisis, and this is not being helped by various entities including the government who want to keep changing the perception of what it is: a large and lovely and diverse country with wonderful people.
I might also point out with the exception of some merchant banks, the banking system in Jamaica is not what rich people seek. The service, in most cases, is truly Third World. People from Jamaica have gotten used to the gross inefficiencies because there are no other choices. High net worth individuals desire to be catered to in a manner that seems unknown in the Jamaican banking system.
No banking haven remarks are acknowledged. What I was highlighting from the article is the salesmanship (promotion) of a level of financial services by government ministers stressing Ja. upgraded flight infrastructure. Interestingly, if true, was the reported information of plans for an inland aerodrome to land private jets.
I "hear" in your comments the frustrations over normal banking services, but you are certainly aware that the off-shore aspects that were being referenced are in the nature of tax shelters and the High Net Worth players are utilizing tax attorneys/accountants assessing safety/risk/volatility....thats a completely different banking window.
Ostensibly, this is not laundry being dropped off.
What the government ministers, it seems, are trying to suggest to the HNW's is that as account secrecy dissipates in the Swiss & Cayman-like accounts allowing more transparency for the "revenue snoopers" that a stable democratic Jamaica, with facilities for private jets & elite-cushy hideaways, could carve out some of that business.
IT IS A POLITICAL SALES JOB (with investment bank co-operation) & notice that, in the blog cited, that it was the Minister of Tourism pouring the Kool Aid!
Jamaica = banking haven like Ryanair = luxury flights.
Who have given life to money/debt by their blood sweat and tears, deserve any havens that may be created beyond those we are already blessed with.