First Alert,
for every member.
The platform has been built and given. One decision remains: how its running is funded, so that every member property is ready together.
Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association · October 2026 · Figures in US dollars
Presented by a council member with an interest in the outcome, disclosed on the next page.
Interest, declared.
The author sits on this council and is the principal of the company that built First Alert and would be paid under any option in this paper. He will not vote on the matter, and this agreement should be deliberated on and decided without the creator's participation.
How the running of First Alert is funded for the whole membership. Not whether the association has the platform. It does.
The running of it: hosting, email, maintenance, security, support. A recurring cost that falls due every month.
The decision: who pays the second part, and how. Three options follow; one is recommended.
An award-winning platform, given.
Twelve hazard plans written for Jamaican properties. Action cards with the first ten minutes. A real alert system that reaches every phone in seconds behind a typed confirmation. Drills, a six-role response team, automated readiness reminders, printable wall notices, and an Admin Console for the Secretariat.
Fixed development cost: US$55,000. Already invested, already delivered, and not recovered under any option in this paper. This is the size of the gift.
One property, one night.
Known costs, no surprises.
Annual cost exposure at nominal use. Maintenance and uptime is the real line; it keeps a platform that issues emergency instructions patched, monitored and answered around the clock. Every other line is small, and every line but one is a direct cost already being paid today.
These costs are fixed. They do not fall if fewer properties enrol: a platform that must be ready for all two hundred costs the same to run for twenty. The estimate assumes nominal use; the buffer covers ordinary growth; heavy use, or admitting non-member properties, is a re-estimate. Nothing in this paper accounts for country-wide adoption across all tourism properties in Jamaica: that would shift the dynamics and every number on every page, and would be a separate proposal. The fixed development cost of US$55,000 is not included and is not recovered.
| Line | What it covers | US$ a year |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and database | Application, database, storage for maps and plans | 3,600 |
| Email delivery | Invitations, reminders, drill notices, real alerts | 1,800 |
| Maintenance and uptime | Engineering, patches, monitoring, incident response | 54,000 |
| Support and administration | The help desk and register work with the Secretariat: the operator's existing support channel, formalised with a service standard | 9,000 |
| Content and compliance | Annual guide revision, hazard content, legal pages | 4,800 |
| Security, backups, monitoring | Penetration testing, backup verification, uptime | 4,800 |
| Operating cost, per year | 78,000 | |
| Activity buffer | Safety allowance for higher-than-nominal activity: more alerts, drills, staff and support calls. Absorbs ordinary growth; does not fund heavy use. The only line above cost. | 18,000 |
| Total, per year | 96,000 |
One price per property, billed once a year.
These are not market rates, and they are not an offer to individual properties. They are the association's cost of running First Alert, with no mark-up, divided across the membership. They hold only on the basis that every member property in good standing is enrolled: the programme is membership-wide, not opt-in. A property joining on its own would pay several times these figures, which is the measure of what membership is delivering. Pricing follows the association's own categories; every branch, location or sub-property counts as its own property, because each needs its own plan, team and alert.
A technical help desk, staffed by people, for every enrolled property. It covers the platform: sign-in and access, invitations and the team upload, alerts and drills that do not behave, the plan PDF, anything that looks broken. Reached by email through the portal; answered within one working day, urgent faults the same day. It does not write a property's plan, run its drills or train its staff; those belong to the manager and the six leaders, and the platform is built so that they can.
On-site training and support from the First Alert team is available to any property on request, in person, billed separately to that property at a published day rate. It is the one thing outside the membership-wide fee.
Three ways to fund it. One recommended.
0 to the association
Members hear: "A new line on the dues."
Clean and complete, but the whole cost lands on the smallest properties as hard as on the largest, and the association gives nothing visible.
At a 25 percent share: a small or medium member pays 25.50 a month, a large member 43.50; the association funds about 24,000 a year across 200 properties, and less with Option C.
Members hear: "Every member gets it, and the association pays a quarter."
0 to partial
Members hear nothing about money at all.
A funder who wants every tourism property in Jamaica on the roster is welcome, and is a different proposal: this paper's calculations cover the JHTA membership only.
Not on offer: opt-in at these rates. The costs are fixed, so a handful of enrolments cannot carry them; that is a different price and a different paper.
| Association's share of the fee | Small or medium member pays, a month | Large member pays, a month | Association funds, a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| None (Option A) | 34 | 58 | 0 |
| 25 percent (recommended) | 25.50 | 43.50 | 24,000 |
| 50 percent | 17 | 29 | 48,000 |
| 75 percent | 8.50 | 14.50 | 72,000 |
| 100 percent | 0 | 0 | 96,000 |
Association figures assume the membership-wide programme across 200 member properties: 150 small or medium at 408 a year and 50 large at 696, a fee pool of 96,000, equal to the steady-state figure on the cost page. The Secretariat's register will give the true mix.
Whose data, and where.
Sovereignty in practice means control and portability. The platform gives both, and claims nothing it cannot keep.
A council decision about value.
Two agreements are drafted for counsel: a platform licence at no fee, perpetual, for the JHTA edition; and an operating services agreement for the whole membership at a fixed annual sum, the per-property figures being its basis rather than its billing unit, with a three-year initial term, service levels, a data processing agreement, and data return if either party ends it. The fee is anchored to cost, not to a number anyone chose.
Confidentiality. Public announcements do not list these prices or any financial consideration in this arrangement. First Alert is offered to other business groups and entities at market rates; a figure quoted in the media as the JHTA's would set that market, and this one is below it by design.
Ready together, or property by property.
Every member property has a written plan, a real alert on every team phone and a drill habit before the next hurricane season, for less than a dollar a day at the association's share, and with the original offer kept in full view.
The platform keeps running at the author's expense for a while, then stops. The properties most likely to have no plan at all are the ones left without one. The question returns to this table next year with the same numbers.
So that when something happens,
nobody reaches for a binder.
jhtareadiness.org · Figures to confirm before tabling: the member size mix from the Secretariat's register, and the association's share.