The Tourism–Poverty Paradox in Jamaica: A Parish-Level Mathematical Examination of Hotel Concentration, Tourism Employment, and Poverty

Source abstract

Tourism is one of Jamaica's principal economic sectors, yet the geographical coexistence of internationally competitive hotel enclaves and economically disadvantaged communities raises questions about the extent to which tourism development translates into local poverty reduction. This study examines the parish-level relationship between poverty and hotel-tourism concentration and develops a mathematical Tourism–Poverty Transmission Function explaining how tourism activity may affect household poverty through employment, wages, local procurement, entrepreneurship, fiscal transfers, leakages, and spatial inequality. Official 2012 parish poverty data indicate substantial geographical variation, ranging from 9.4% in St Mary, 10.8% in Hanover, and 11.1% in St James to 28.6% in Kingston and 32.5% in St Thomas, while major accommodation activity was concentrated around Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril. A descriptive comparison shows that the five-parish north/north-west tourism belt of St Ann, Trelawny, St James, Hanover and Westmoreland had a mean poverty prevalence of approximately 14.5%, compared with approximately 22.1% among the remaining nine parishes, representing a 7.7-percentage-point difference. Nevertheless, the coexistence of relatively low poverty in tourism-intensive St James and Hanover with higher poverty in Westmoreland and St Ann demonstrates that hotel concentration alone cannot adequately explain parish poverty and that tourism's poverty-reducing effect depends on local economic linkages, employment quality, human capital, rurality, ownership, and economic leakage. The study concludes that Jamaica should shift from measuring tourism success primarily through arrivals and hotel rooms towards a Local Tourism Retention and Poverty Reduction framework that measures how much tourism expenditure, employment, ownership, procurement, and value added remain within host communities.