Tourist Bookings in Jamaica Down 30 Percent for Winter

Wayne Cummings, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), has said that there are early signs that tourism may slide in the year ahead. He says the industry is already seeing a 30 percent decline in forward bookings for the first quarter of 2009.

The JHTA president said that while for now, some hotels have reasonably full houses, which is typical for the fall months, the tracking for January to April for the forward bookings was down.

If we were to go by Cummings’ projections, this would mean that stopover arrivals could decline from 142,861 in January 2008 to 100,003 for that month in 2009. For February, visits would slide from 156,831 to 109,782 tourists; and March, from 184,276 in 2008 to 128,987.

The businesses that are dependent on tourism, such as merchants and street-side vendors, should expect their earnings to dwindle, he said. He also warned that staff in the hotels might have to be rotated. The decline in bookings is linked to the global financial crisis, and is coming from all but one of Jamaica’s traditional markets for tourists.