With Jamaica’s tourism sector steadily rebounding, Director of Tourism Donovan White said, if all things should go as planned, the island may welcome up to 4.3 million visitors by the third quarter of 2023.
White, who was speaking at the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s destination media briefing on Wednesday, noted that this projection is based on Jamaica’s 2019 tourism season during which approximately 4.3 million visitors journeyed to the island.
This comprised 2.7 million stopover arrivals and 1.6 million cruise passengers, whose combined spending contributed to the destination earning US$3.64 billion.
A clear indication that this projection is attainable for destination Jamaica, White shared, is shown through the record number of visitors that entered the island through air and seaports last year.
“Back in November, you may recall that we projected Jamaica would welcome a total of 1.5 million visitors for the full calendar year of 2021. We are pleased to announce that we have recorded over 1.3 million visitors from January to November in terms of our final reporting numbers,” said White.
“An estimated 217,000 [visitors] also came in December, which, when fully tabulated, puts us right on track to meet that projection for the calendar year of 2021,” he added.
While the world grapples with novel coronavirus cases, the tourism director told reporters that he is optimistic that Jamaica will also see big numbers in visitor arrivals this year. This, he pointed out, will bring the island a step closer to the goal of 4.3 million visitors by 2023.
“Our projected number for stopover arrivals for the 2022 calendar year is 1.85 million and we see cruises coming around with about 7,000 [visitors]. We know what COVID and the various variants of COVID have done to the best laid-out plans across the region, so we have forecast the numbers based on what we know is the level of air seat and cruise porting capacities that have been committed to the destination,” White said.
“However, if that changes for any reason, which has happened in the last two years, that could affect our projections negatively,” he added.
To ensure the island is fully prepared for this record number of visitors, White shared, the tourism sector will also benefit from huge investments in its accommodation capacity.
“I am also happy to say that 90 per cent of our planned tourism investments in our destination are still on track. Approximately 4,800 rooms will be added by the end of 2023 which, of course, is a huge vote of confidence from our investors in Jamaica,” the tourism director stated.
In the meantime, White told reporters, Jamaica has been doubling its efforts to vaccinate all 170,000 tourism workers across the island as the country navigates this new normal.
“Our tourism vaccination task force has remained hard at work to facilitate the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to all tourism workers and their families islandwide, with over 70 per cent of the task force already being vaccinated,” said the tourism director.
“The vaccination drives have been taking place over the past several months with the most recent voluntary blitz taking place in 17 locations this past weekend. Our goal is to ensure that all of Jamaica’s 170,000 tourism workers are vaccinated and have that frontline protection mechanism in place,” he added.
“To date, I am pleased to report that over 40 per cent of our tourism work force and their families have been vaccinated and we have now administered some 1.3 million doses of [COVID-19] vaccine islandwide. In addition, we received another 650,000 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from the Government of France this past Monday,” White continued.
Acknowledging that the country has a far way to go before achieving herd immunity, the tourism director expressed confidence in the durability of the tourism sector.
“We are extremely grateful for the success we have had, and I am optimistic about the future of Jamaica’s tourism industry,” White said.
