JA still tops for tourists

Jamaica is heading into what is expected to be its best summer tourist season ever. The island has already welcomed two million stopover and cruise visitors since the start of the year.

Jamaica is best known as the birthplace of reggae, Bob Marley, world’s fastest sprinters, Blue Mountain coffee, Red Stripe beer, its rum, beautiful beaches, jerk dishes, luxurious all-inclusive resorts and majestic waterfalls. That intoxicating mix is attracting tourists from all over the world, especially Americans.

Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett said: “Already before even completing the first six months of this year we have already received a combined 2 million stopover and cruise visitors with record earnings of US$2 billion, a whopping 18% above the 2019 earnings for the same time period. It should be no surprise then that Jamaica is bracing for the best summer tourist season ever.”

He added: “Jamaica welcomed approximately 3.3 million visitors in 2022 and registered a remarkable US$3.7 billion recovery of earnings compared to the pre-COVID earnings of 2019. Jamaica is also experiencing a rise in summer 2023 air travel bookings by 33% as compared to summer 2022.”

Bartlett also explained his recent trip to the United States where he engaged with representatives from the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) and forged a partnership agreement between the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC) and George Washington University.

Jamaica’s primary source market, the United States, represents 1.2 million of the 1.4 million seats that have been secured for the upcoming summer travel season, representing a 16% increase over the island’s previous best, recorded in 2019.

But the number of tourists flocking to Jamaica’s sun-drenched beaches caused long queues and hours-long waits for arriving passengers at the island’s main airport.

“The recovery has been stronger than anticipated and everybody all over the world is having difficulty with their airports because … (many) of the workers have not come back,” Bartlett said.

He said authorities plan to spend more on technology as they strive to do away with paperwork at the airport, including ending a requirement for visitors to fill out a form upon arrival.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the problems at Sangster underscore the need to push through the $70 million modernisation and expansion project that already was underway.

The work is scheduled to be completed by 2025, and Holness said the improvements at the Caribbean’s largest and busiest airport “will make Jamaica more attractive and make Jamaica more competitive with other countries in the region, which have also invested heavily in improving their infrastructure.”

aAs part of the project, the runway is being lengthened at a cost of $34 million, work that is expected to be finished by next month.