MON­TEGO BAY, JA­MAICA

Ja­maica is open for busi­ness and is wel­com­ing in­vestors from the Caribbean to take ad­van­tage of op­por­tu­ni­ties that are avail­able in the coun­try.

This is as talks are on­go­ing for Movi­eTowne to ex­pand its foot­print in Ja­maica.

Movi­eTowne will face stiff com­pe­ti­tion from en­ter­tain­ment providers in the mar­ket such as Carib The­atre in Kingston, and Palace Amuse­ment, which op­er­ates in Kingston and Mon­tego Bay.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion’s (CHTA) Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place in Mon­tego Bay on Tues­day, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Tourism Ed­mund Bartlett told Busi­ness Guardian that there were con­ver­sa­tions in New York last year about this new ven­ture and the min­istry will be re­vis­it­ing it.

“It is an ex­cit­ing prospect. Part of what we want to do is see more Caribbean in­vest­ment in tourism, to en­sure that the re­gion ben­e­fits more from the pro­ceeds of the in­dus­try. The re­ten­tion of the dol­lar in the Caribbean, must be stronger and that can on­ly come from re­gion­al in­vest­ment for tourism goods and ser­vices,” Bartlett ex­plained.

When Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin, he said, “We have Michael Lee-Chin and Guardian Hold­ings as part­ners but still things are very pre­lim­i­nary.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica has been very re­cep­tive and we are ex­cit­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­com­ing a tru­ly re­gion­al brand with lo­ca­tions in Trinidad, Guyana and Ja­maica. We would like to be­come the equiv­a­lent of San­dals. Ja­maica will love to have a Movi­eTowne.”

Ja­maica’s tourism per­for­mance

Bartlett told the room of jour­nal­ists that Ja­maica’s tourism in­dus­try is on the road to suc­cess with a record of 1.8 mil­lion vis­i­tors for the first five months of 2024, with 700,000 plus cruise ar­rivals and 1.1 mil­lion stopover vis­i­tors for the same pe­ri­od.

He said this ac­counts for US$1.8 bil­lion dol­lars in rev­enue for the pe­ri­od. The min­is­ter not­ed for 2024 the tourism min­istry fore­casts 4.58 mil­lion vis­i­tors and 1.4 mil­lion cruise ar­rivals.

“This rep­re­sents a 4.6 per cent in­crease for stopover ar­rivals and a 23 per cent in­crease for cruise pas­sen­gers, mov­ing from 581,822 in 2023 to 713,983.

This op­ti­mistic out­look cor­re­sponds with a to­tal ar­rival fore­cast of 4.58 mil­lion vis­i­tors, com­pris­ing 3.23 mil­lion stopover ar­rivals and 1.4 mil­lion cruise ar­rivals. No­tably, we an­tic­i­pate a 7 per cent in­crease in to­tal ar­rivals com­pared to the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year,” he stat­ed. Bartlett an­nounced that 2,000 new rooms are sched­uled to open in 2024​.

“The first 1,000 rooms of the 2,000-room  will be Princess Grand Ja­maica​, then the 753-room Riu Palace Aquarelle and 450-room Uni­co Ho­tel in Mon­tego Bay. ​

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15,000 to 20,000 rooms are  slat­ed for con­struc­tion over the next five to ten years with a to­tal in­vest­ment of US$5 bil­lion,” he out­lined.

In­crease in vis­i­tors

from oth­er mar­kets

Over the past few years, re­gion­al tourism lead­ers have had an in­creased fo­cus on the Latin Amer­i­ca trav­el mar­ket and Bartlett said Ja­maica has seen a 40 per cent in that mar­ket for 2023. 

This, he said, was due to the part­ner­ship with CO­PA Air­lines, with dai­ly Pana­ma flights and con­nec­tions from Colom­bia​, Ar­genti­na​, Brazil​, Pe­ru​, Cos­ta Ri­ca​, and Mex­i­co​.

Fur­ther, the min­is­ter high­light­ed that key mar­kets showed strong per­for­mances.

“The US main­tained a ma­jor­i­ty stake in the over­all mar­ket with a 74 per cent share of to­tal ar­rivals, out­per­form­ing 2022 by 16 per­cent­age points.

“And our sec­ond largest mar­ket, Cana­da ex­pe­ri­enced re­mark­able growth of 38.6 per cent, ac­count­ing for 12.9 per cent of the mar­ket,” he dis­closed.

How­ev­er, Bartlett stressed that pen­e­trat­ing in­to new mar­kets is need­ed to keep the tourism in­dus­try thriv­ing.

He an­nounced that the min­istry is look­ing close­ly at the In­di­an mar­ket as the coun­try is poised to be one of the top five per­form­ing economies in the world.

Bartlett said that over 100 mil­lion In­di­ans will join the mid­dle class and would be able to af­ford trav­el out­side of the sub-con­ti­nent.

The min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that the sec­tor con­tin­ues to build a sus­tain­able and re­silient fu­ture by link­ing mi­cro and small farm­ers di­rect­ly with buy­ers with­in the tourism in­dus­try to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, with many farm­ers across Ja­maica sup­ply­ing, di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, our tourism in­dus­try with tonnes of fruits, veg­eta­bles, and meat.

“We con­tin­ue to up-skill and cer­ti­fy thou­sands of tourism work­ers and high school stu­dents through free pro­grammes of­fered by our Ja­maica Cen­tre for Tourism In­no­va­tion and its lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

Al­so, we con­tin­ue our pro­vi­sion of a se­cure re­tire­ment in­come for our tourism work­ers through our Tourism Work­ers Pen­sion Scheme,” the min­is­ter de­tailed.

Caribbean’s per­for­mance 

At the open­ing of the 42nd Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA) mar­ket­place on Mon­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Nico­la Mad­den-Greig, high­light­ed the im­pres­sive re­cov­ery of tourism in the Caribbean fol­low­ing the chal­lenges of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Mad­den-Greig pre­sent­ed the “State of the In­dus­try and Re­gion” ad­dress, em­pha­sis­ing that in 2023, the Caribbean sur­passed pre-pan­dem­ic tourist ar­rival num­bers with a 0.8 per cent in­crease com­pared to 2019.

The eco­nom­ic im­pact re­port re­vealed cru­cial da­ta about tourism’s con­tri­bu­tion to the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).

In 2019, tourism’s glob­al con­tri­bu­tion to GDP was 10.4 per cent, while in the Caribbean it reached a re­mark­able 13.7 per cent, Mad­den-Greig said. In 2023, these fig­ures ad­just­ed to 9.2 per cent glob­al­ly and 11.5 per cent in the Caribbean. Pro­jec­tions for 2032 are en­cour­ag­ing, with ex­pec­ta­tions of an 11.6 per cent glob­al con­tri­bu­tion and 14.2 per cent in the Caribbean.

The re­port al­so re­vealed that em­ploy­ment in the trav­el and tourism sec­tor rep­re­sent­ed 9.6 per cent of glob­al jobs in 2023, while in the Caribbean this per­cent­age was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er, reach­ing 15.2 per cent.

She em­pha­sised the vi­brant en­er­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that has pro­pelled the Caribbean for­ward and the need to re­flect this vi­tal­i­ty in brand­ing, cel­e­brat­ing every­thing na­ture of­fers: the sea, the moun­tains, the air, and es­pe­cial­ly the peo­ple of the Caribbean, who tru­ly dri­ve the tourism prod­uct.

In terms of ser­vices, Mad­den-Greig men­tioned that they have ex­pand­ed their team and seek to con­tin­ue of­fer­ing new and in­ter­est­ing ser­vices, in ad­di­tion to adding new events. This year, for ex­am­ple, saw the first “Caribbean MICE Ex­change,” a sep­a­rate track for meet­ing plan­ners, and the ad­di­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ad­vi­sors.

The pres­i­dent stressed that the as­so­ci­a­tion is tak­ing the CHTA to the next lev­el, work­ing close­ly with in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel and tourism as­so­ci­a­tions, as well as gov­ern­ment part­ners, to en­sure ser­vices are pro­vid­ed to their Caribbean mem­bers.

Fur­ther­more, she un­der­scored the CHTA’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy.

She spoke about beach ero­sion due to cli­mate change and men­tioned col­lab­o­ra­tion with their sis­ter or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Caribbean Al­liance for Sus­tain­able Tourism, and oth­er en­ti­ties like The Na­ture Con­ser­van­cy.

Re­gard­ing the share of ma­jor Caribbean des­ti­na­tions, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic led with 25 per cent of to­tal ar­rivals, fol­lowed by Puer­to Ri­co with 12 per cent, and Cu­ba with 8 per cent. Ja­maica, the host of the event, cap­tured 7 per cent of ar­rivals.

Des­ti­na­tion per­for­mance

and source mar­kets

Among the best-per­form­ing Caribbean des­ti­na­tions in 2023 com­pared to 2019, Cu­raçao record­ed a 27 per cent in­crease, close­ly fol­lowed by the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the US Vir­gin Is­lands, each with a 22 per cent in­crease.

While the Lee­ward Is­lands of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) ex­pe­ri­enced the high­est in­crease in tourist ar­rivals com­pared to 2022, with a 20.4 per cent rise, while the French Caribbean faced the largest de­cline with an 8.8 per cent drop.

Re­gard­ing source mar­kets, the Caribbean saw a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ar­rivals from Cana­da, with a 46.1 per cent rise com­pared to 2022. How­ev­er, ar­rivals from Ger­many de­creased by 5.8 per cent.