All-Inclusive and All-Excluding: Q1 2007 and the Access Crisis at Jamaica’s Resort Beaches

Briefing

• Access corridor survey found fewer than one in five boom-era resorts in full compliance.
• All-inclusive model’s wristband system identified as primary practical barrier to access.
• Parliamentary question tabled on ministry’s enforcement record; answer revealed minimal action.
• Tourism product positioning as exclusive “paradise” in conflict with legal access obligations.
• Advocates proposed independent access compliance monitoring funded through development levies.

The access corridor survey conducted by a coalition of civil society organisations and released in early 2007 provided the most comprehensive documented picture to date of the gap between Jamaica’s beach access law and the reality on the ground. The survey assessed a sample of resort properties that had received development approvals requiring access corridors since the requirement had been introduced, and it found that fewer than one in five of those properties had corridors that were functional, signed, and accessible to members of the public who wished to use them. The majority had corridors that existed in the approval documentation but not in any usable form at the site.

The parliamentary question about the ministry’s enforcement record, tabled in the first quarter of 2007, produced an answer that confirmed what the survey had implied: formal enforcement actions against non-compliant properties had been minimal, and the compliance negotiations that were being described as an ongoing process had not, in the preceding two years, produced measurable improvement in the number of compliant properties. The political system was being asked, directly and publicly, why a legal requirement was not being enforced, and the answer it gave was essentially that it was working on it.

The Wristband System

The all-inclusive model’s wristband identification system was identified by access advocates as the primary practical mechanism through which access exclusion was enforced at properties where a nominal corridor existed. Guests who had paid the all-inclusive rate wore wristbands that identified them as entitled to use the resort’s beach, pool, and facilities. Members of the public who had used the access corridor to reach the beach did not wear wristbands, and resort security staff interpreted the absence of a wristband as grounds for requesting that the person leave the beach. The legal position — that members of the public who had accessed the beach through the public corridor had a right to be on the foreshore — was not communicated to resort security staff or enforced against them when they asked corridor users to leave.

The Independent Monitoring Proposal

The proposal for independent access compliance monitoring funded through development levies was one of several concrete policy recommendations that access advocates brought to the 2007 policy conversation. The logic was straightforward: the compliance monitoring that had failed to produce results under the existing self-reporting and ministry-inspection regime had failed partly because it was underfunded. If a small levy on resort development approvals was dedicated to an independent monitoring function — one not subject to the investment-climate pressures that inhibited ministry enforcement — the monitoring data that already documented widespread non-compliance could be used more effectively to drive actual remediation. The proposal was not adopted in 2007, but the arguments it rested on would continue to be made in the years following the boom.

Related: Property Market Analysis | NEPA Jamaica

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