So go ahead, book that vacation at the Bahia Principe in Runaway Bay. Orlando Patterson says it's OK

Mr. Brilliant and I have been travelling to Jamaica since 1986. We've stayed at large all-inclusives and at small locally-owned properties. The development of the tourism infrastructure in recent years has in many ways made the experience far more pleasant, as you no longer have to sit in a hotel lobby on your day of departure, worrying that your bus back to the airport will be late, or it won't show up, or it'll break down on the way to the airport, or that a guy your driver picks up on the way dies on the way to the airport -- all things that have happened to us in the past. A new wing at the airport means that you can wait for your flight at the gate,instead of in a departure lounge where half the flights are never announced and the PA system resembles that of the New York City subway system.

But along with these enhancements comes the specter of overdevelopment, particularly in the form of large all-inclusive hotels owned by foreign companies.

Jamaicans have long had a love-hate relationship with the large all-inclusive hotels, which until recently were dominated by three chains: Couples, Sandals, and SuperClubs; all at least marginally Jamaican owned (though Sandals owner Butch Stewart is believed by many Jamaicans to be just the Jamaican public face of foreign interests). Yes, they provide jobs, but their rules against tipping limit the income that workers can make, and the high management jobs are largely held by non-Jamaicans.

In recent years, Spanish companies have cast their eye towards Jamaica. The Riu chain now has two hotels on Bloody Bay in Negril and another at Mammee Bay in St. Ann. A new Bahia Principe is opening in Runaway Bay. The rampant overdevelopment is already causing the reef off the Negril shoreline to die, and the problems with these hotels are already the stuff of legend. The Bahia Principe has already had to ask other hotels to take its guests because it isn't ready on schedule. Environmental groups tried to stop the construction of the Riu at Mammee Bay. But with the tourism dollar at stake, all of these projects are inevitably approved.

Unless these properties are able to make the tourism pie bigger by increasing tourism from Spain, the net result of this overdevelopment is going to be that smaller hotel owners are going to be squeezed out, which would be tragic, as small properties, even smaller all-inclusives, offer more local food, a more relaxed experience, and greater opportunity to interact with staff.

But Orlando Patterson in the New York Times touts the high degree of what he calls local ownership of the all-inclusive properties, conveniently forgetting the $1.3 billion in Spanish hotel investment, much of it in properties with 600 rooms or more:

What do the islands gain? Tourism generates desperately needed foreign revenue for the government, creates employment (as high as 60 percent of the jobs in the Bahamas), and makes possible a wide range of support services and industries. For many of the smaller islands, it is a godsend, especially in the face of the collapsing traditional banana and sugar industries.

Nonetheless, the literature on Caribbean tourism is surprisingly critical. Foreign anthropologists complain about the “tourist gaze” and the distortion of local cultures; local chauvinists declaim that “tourism is whorism.” These criticisms are largely puerile. In Jamaica, it’s the locals who do the gazing while the tourists are busy baking themselves behind the high walls of all-inclusive hotels. If anything, tourism enhances residents’ awareness of indigenous cultures, and it supports large numbers of entertainers. Reggae artists have no problem singing dated versions of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-oh! Day da light an’ me wan’ go ’ome” if it allows them to get nasty and ragamuffin the next night in the thriving dance hall music culture.

The criticisms of economists seem more substantial. The two buzzwords are linkages and leakages. On most islands, most of the money spent by tourists leaks right back out of the country to pay for supplies for the tourists, or for the repatriation of profits and salaries. Thus there is little linkage, or integration, with the rest of the economy, leaving the islands solely dependent on a fickle industry. Leakage runs as high as 80 percent on the smaller islands.

Here is the critics’ problem: The islands with the highest leakage and tourist dependence are all doing better, per capita, than the larger islands with more integrated economies. The Bahamas and Antigua have almost no unemployment and per-capita incomes three times that of Jamaica. And these islands have substantially higher human development indexes, the gold standard of how well a country is meeting a broad range of basic needs. Barbados’s index of .864 approaches European levels.

The main cost of tourism is its effects on the environment. The disposal of solid waste from cruise ships and the poor treatment of hotel sewage threaten marine fauna, and degrade coral reefs and fishing grounds. Water sports are a menace. Beaches are eroded and landscape violated by bad architectural planning. Noise pollution is often unbearable. Corrective efforts have had limited success.

However, the industry is too often criticized for the wrong reasons. In Jamaica, tourism is booming, and 2007 promises to be the industry’s best year. Most American tourists go to the all-inclusives, which are criticized for greedily gating them off from the rest of the local economy. The real situation is more complex, as explained by Dr. Noel Lyon, a Harvard-trained economist and entrepreneur experienced in both farming and tourism.

Jamaica has terrible crime rates, but that has little effect on tourism because travelers know they are safe inside the all-inclusives. Furthermore, the all-inclusives draw substantially on local suppliers. Over all, Jamaica, with a high ratio of local ownership and management, has relatively lower leakage. All-inclusives are actually a nimble adaptation to a volatile social environment. Jamaica’s socioeconomic failures cannot be linked to tourism, without which it would be in even more dire straits.

I'm not sure that patting ourselves on the back because tourists can rely on being safe behind high walls and locked gates is all that great for Jamaica, not when the infrastructure's inability to handle the extra load is not taken into account. Years of increasing tourism have done little to improve the lives of most Jamaicans, and putting more control over the livelihood of those Jamaicans educated enough to work in the tourism industry in the hands of foreign companies with no real investment in the country doesn't seem to me to be much of an answer. On our last trip, the driver who took us to our hotel described Jamaica and the chances the new Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, has of doing anything constructive, thusly: If your car is broken down and doesn't work, and someone else buys it, the person you sold it to now has the broken-down car. In other words, a Prime Minister who inherits a broken country can only fix it to the extent that she has resources to do so. I'm skeptical that Spanish hoteliers, for whom the Jamaican properties are just one part of their business, are going to have the incentive to fix the broken-down car.