Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

In Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

Ja­maica’s planned rapid re­cov­ery mode for the tourism sec­tor has seen ear­ly suc­cess as the coun­try has seen a 5.2 per cent in­crease in tourism in just six months of 2023 when com­pared to 2019, its last pre-pan­dem­ic year.

Ja­maica Tourism Board di­rec­tor Dono­van White, dur­ing his ad­dress at the Ja­maica Prod­uct Ex­change (JAPEX) at the Mon­tego Bay Con­ven­tion Cen­tre on Mon­day, re­vealed that for the year so far the is­land was not on­ly see­ing in­creased tourist vis­i­tors com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic years, but al­so a no­table in­crease in spend­ing by vis­i­tors as well.

“Be­fore even the end of June 2023, Ja­maica al­ready wel­comed over 2 mil­lion vis­i­tors to the des­ti­na­tion but more im­por­tant­ly, and where we have be­gun to tru­ly make in­roads and have trac­tion with our tourism prod­uct is where, at the end of June, we have sur­passed $2 bil­lion in earn­ings to the des­ti­na­tion,” said White, “What this re­al­ly means is that our vis­i­tors are stay­ing slight­ly longer in the des­ti­na­tion which is good, but they are al­so spend­ing more.”

For com­par­i­son, Ja­maica’s tourism num­bers for Jan­u­ary 2022 to De­cem­ber 2022 saw the is­land wel­come 2,478,386 stopovers, which in it­self rep­re­sent­ed a 69.2 per cent in­crease over 2021 and a near­ly full re­cov­ery from 2019.

De­spite the en­cour­ag­ing num­bers, White said the JTB was still fo­cus­ing on im­prov­ing the num­ber of vis­i­tors to the is­land with a tar­get of 5 mil­lion vis­i­tors by 2025.

He point­ed to the open­ing of the 260-room San­dals Dunn’s Riv­er, Ocho Rios on May 24, 2023 as a cru­cial step in that di­rec­tion with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,000 rooms slat­ed for con­struc­tion over the next two to five years.

White said, “For the next 5 to 10 years, in­vest­ment projects will see an ad­di­tion­al 15,000 to 20,000 new rooms with in­vest­ments valu­ing US$4 bil­lion to US$5 bil­lion.”

White al­so de­tailed plans to in­crease air­lift to the is­land, tar­get­ing mar­kets in Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and In­dia.

This year rep­re­sent­ed the first time since the pan­dem­ic that JAPEX has been host­ed in per­son since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.