Beach Scenes
By Olivia Brundia
On the fourth day of the trip, the group of students and professors ventured to the town of Ocho Rios via bus. We had the opportunity to stop at two beaches, amongst other activities for the day. The larger of the two beaches that we went to had a fee to get in of $3.00 USD, and had different sections marked off with rope. There was a portion dedicated to public swimming, boat lanes for tourist-related activities, and further down the stretch of coastline larger resorts had their own access points. After a long winter that is only halfway through its course, the sun and salt water was a welcome change, and there were some small schools of fish swimming near the surface of the water. This was particularly exciting as some students in the group had never touched an ocean before, and it was the birthday of one of my classmates.
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| Celebrating Johanna's birthday! |
Aside from festivities and exploration, the experiences prompted some reflection. In recent years in Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, water access and beach property is slowly being taken over by large hotel and resort companies. This limited public access can reduce the amount of domestic tourism when locals have their time off, and can restrict access from smaller hotels and their respective tourists. I would think that this would make sustainable tourism techniques on waterfronts quite difficult to enforce unless there were strict regulation systems in place from government bodies, or if large resort companies were to take the initiative to change their own policies and procedures to be more eco-friendly. I believe that this would be quite interesting to consider while pursuing the rest of our Feasibility Plan for the caves and how pitching the concept of sustainable tourism can be advantageous for appealing to a niche market.
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