Jamaica’s Tourism Lost $76 Billion to Covid-19 in 2020

Jamaican Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said the island nation’s tourism sector ended 2020 with an estimated loss of $76 billion because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr. Bartlett linked his prediction to a trend which started and continued through the first 10 months of the year, as the country welcomed just over 1.1 million visitors, a considerable decline compared to the 3.4 million visitors over the same period in 2019.

The minister noted that following a record-breaking year in 2019, tourism receipts for January and February indicated that the sector was growing at a rate of 5.2 per cent at the start of 2020, as the country recorded more than 227,000 stopover arrivals in January, representing a 4.9 per cent increase, or 10,691 additional arrivals, over the 216,509 for the corresponding period in 2019.

“If that trend had held, we would have welcomed more than five million visitors and earned a historic US$5 billion by year-end,” Bartlett said, noting that this was obviously before the global lockdown of the sector that began in March 2020, as the novel coronavirus quickly became a pandemic.

He said that the lockdown ushered in a new paradigm filled with unparalleled uncertainty and disruptions.

“The impact of the tourism decline in Jamaica has been made worse by the fact that other key sources of incomes/revenues, foreign direct investments and remittances were also at risk, given that primary suppliers – the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada – are also facing economic shock,” he pointed out.

“Undiversified economies like ours also mean more pronounced impact for our people, economy and future from prolonged tourism decline,” Mr. Bartlett said.

Source: Jamaica Observer