Jamaica Stands Tall as an Example of Tourism Resilience

At the CHTA's Caribbean Travel Marketplace 2023 in Barbados, Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, talked about the success story his country has to offer. The island nation has been awarded by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association's Destination Resilience Award for its recovery efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and its initiatives to strengthen tourism resilience.

How do you describe the situation in your country in terms of tourism?

Tourism has been a critical development especially if we talk about the pandemic and the stop in all of the industries, but now the economy is pretty clear. Tourism provides for an exchange generation between Jamaica and other countries, and also it is focused on increasing the development of GDP and the economic landscape. The number of visitors in Jamaica increased by almost 100% in the first three months of the year, and there were 1.18 million arrivals, 94% more than the same period in 2022 and a record for the season.

What do you expect for the summer season?

We have about one million seats for the summer and that means it will be significant in stock, so we are preparing nearly a thousand new rooms. And we are training our staff to respond to the search and recovery. Also we have high school students getting a degree in hotel management. We are preparing them to enter the industry and to offer a good service.

In which source markets did you have more progress and why?

The United States. It's been the number one market forever. We are still just a short little tab into that rich market, but we now have more to get from the United States. We have connection destinations to the US and we are sure the increase will be very strong.

How are you carrying out your international promotion?

We are using social media very strongly and google digital spaces to bring our messages, and also the traditional media source, to present it institutionally.

Jamaica's tourism has intervention in the cost of the fly tickets?

We don't have any direct intervention on the access to the destinations. That world is competitive and the markets respond directly to the inflections of the push on the economy.

Source: Travel2Latam