Jamaica plans to build its first innovation township near Barrett Town, close to Montego Bay, alongside what would become the Caribbeans tallest hotel in Rose Hall, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett told the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Associations Annual General Meeting, according to the Gleaner.
The township sits near additional commercial development already under way on the Rollins lands, known as Rose Hall Developments, across from the Dreams Rose Hall Resort and Spa, formerly a Hilton property, where land has already been sold for service stations and retail outlets. Bartlett projected that by 2030 Jamaica will have added 10,000 new hotel rooms across a cluster of major developments, including the long-discussed Harmony Cove project, expansions at Palladium and Bahia Principe, and new properties under the Unico, Hard Rock and Moon Palace brands, alongside two new Sandals resorts, one in Runaway Bay and a newly announced AC Marriott in Montego Bay.
Montego Bay is on the verge of an unprecedented tourism renaissance, Bartlett said. This is a level of coordinated, large-scale investment that we have never seen before, not just in Jamaica, but in the Caribbean.
An innovation township is a different kind of project than a resort expansion: rather than more hotel rooms, it implies purpose-built space for technology, research or business activity outside the tourism sector proper, sitting adjacent to but distinct from the resort corridor. Pairing that with a record-height hotel signals an attempt to diversify Montego Bays economic base beyond pure tourism accommodation, even as the accommodation pipeline itself keeps growing. Whether the township materialises on the scale described, and on what timeline, remains to be seen, but the ambition being stated publicly is a marked step up from incremental resort announcements.
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