KINGSTON, Ja­maica-Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett said yes­ter­day that Ja­maica was ex­pect­ing 1.2 mil­lion vis­i­tors from North Amer­i­ca alone this win­ter sea­son. Bartlett strong­ly dis­count­ed re­cent pro­nounce­ments by the rat­ing agency, Stan­dards & Poor's (S&P) that Ja­maica would ex­pe­ri­ence a ma­jor fall off in vis­i­tor ar­rivals to Ja­maica as a re­sult of the con­tin­ued im­pact that the glob­al eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion was hav­ing on Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca.

S&P said the ex­pect­ed tourism slump would drag down Ja­maica's eco­nom­ic growth over the next two years to less than two per cent. The Wall Street-based rat­ings agency said it was bas­ing its out­look on the con­trac­tions in gross do­mes­tic prod­uct wit­nessed for Ja­maica in 2010.Bartlett is cur­rent­ly in Eu­rope for crit­i­cal dis­cus­sions with cur­rent and po­ten­tial in­vestors. "While I am aware of the con­cerns in the mar­ket­place, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to vis­i­tor ar­rivals the Min­istry of Tourism has ramped up its mar­ket di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve to tar­get new mar­kets in South Amer­i­ca, Asia and parts of Eu­rope. (Caribbean360)