By Ayanna Kirton, Contributor
Steven Whittingham (left), managing director of Beach Life Vacations, and Marc Williams, the company's president. - Contributed
BEACH LIFE Vacations, a tour company owned by two Jamaicans living in the United States, is cashing in on Spring Break, one of the great traditions for most college and university students in the U.S.
After completing university in the northeastern U.S., Beach Life Vacations' (BLV) founders Marc Williams, Steven Whittingham, and former partner Andre Brown, saw collegiate travel to Jamaica as the perfect business opportunity. "The whole idea stemmed from our own college life," says Steven Whitting-ham, managing director of BLV.
"A lot of students would ask us about travel to Jamaica for Spring Break and about what Jamaica had to offer," he says. "We had also brought down groups of friends from the States with us on several occasions to enjoy the local scene and realised this industry had been literally untapped by Jamaicans."
So in 2002, with total start-up capital of approximately US$31,000, plans for Beach Life Vacations to become one of the premier Spring Break travel providers began to take shape. Located on the campus of the University of Maryland, BLV's owners say the business is ideally situated to serve its student market. This year BLV has facilitated the travel of over 1,100 students originating primarily from the northeastern schools in the United States, to Jamaica for Spring Break. When compared with last year's figures of 250 students, the company has experienced over 300 per cent growth in its customer base in one year. "We used last year to get the business off the ground, establishing our presence in Jamaica and in the U.S.," says Whittingham. The company estimates a total of 1,200 students will travel to the island with the help of their custom travel arrangements before the Spring Break season wraps up this year. BLV provides Spring Break vacations to Montego Bay, Acapulco, Cancun, the Bahamas, Panama City and Daytona Beach in Florida, but considers Negril its premier destination with 75 per cent of student travellers opting for the resort town that BLV has dubbed 'the capital of casual'.
Every year more and more vacation package providers vie for the opportunity to transport college students to the tropics to enjoy days of reckless abandon. However, both Whittingham and Williams believe that in addition to the typical sun, sea, sex, and alcohol associated with Spring Break, students can also enjoy a vacation of 'substance'. "A lot of tour companies try to lure kids by focusing solely on bars or drinking as the major attractions destinations have to offer," says Whittingham. "We try to incorporate sightseeing and other activities into our packages to make the average Spring Break trip less one-dimensional," says the managing director. Operating in an industry notorious for reacting negatively to world events, particularly in recent years with the events of 9/11, BLV's owners say preparation for the Spring Break season is largely a wait and see game. "After investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing your services you have to sit back and wait for customers, because this industry is heavily subject to the external environment and on the whims of travellers," Williams, BLV's president says. "As a smaller company one of our major challenges is trying to lower our marketing budget while remaining competitive players."
Estimating the company's revenues at the end this fiscal year to amount to over US$1.5 million, BLV's owners say local authorities should not ignore the vast potential of sectors like tourism and entertainment. "We read a lot of the commentary about the government shifting its focus to information technology for long-term economic sustainability," he says. "But we need to focus on perfecting our core competencies because what might work for developed countries like the United States may not necessarily be the way forward from a Jamaican perspective."
