As of January 2022 TUI, the world’s largest tourism company, will resume cruise activities in Jamaica. This will include calls to Port Royal, along with homeporting in Montego Bay. TUI has also confirmed the resumption of flights into the island.
The announcement was made in Dubai recently during a meeting involving Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, Director of Tourism Donovan White, and TUI Group executives. The TUI team included David Burling, CEO Markets and Airlines; and Antonia Bouka, Group Head Government Relations & Public Policy-Destinations.
“Today TUI, one of our largest tour operators and partners in the distribution segment of the tourism industry, confirmed homeporting activities for cruise in Montego Bay. More importantly a number of planned visits and calls on the Port Royal cruise port, starting in January. We expect to have five calls from January through April 2022 in Port Royal,” said Bartlett.
During the discussions with TUI, the company executives advised that their data shows that the demand for cruise is high and they have managed to retain cancelled bookings. They also shared that air capacity for this winter season will be 79,000, which is only nine per cent less than pre-COVID winter figures.
Bartlett assured the TUI executives that Jamaica remains a safe destination with very low instances of COVID-19 transmission within the resilient corridors, as well as a very robust tourism workers’ vaccination campaign.
“Our worker vaccination drive has been very effective in Jamaica, with many of our workers opting to become fully vaccinated. It is our hope that soon we will be celebrating 30-40 per cent of Jamaica’s tourism workers being vaccinated, as well as a significant increase in the vaccination of the rest of our population by January,” said Bartlett.
Minister Bartlett noted that he and his team have also had discussions with other key partners in Dubai regarding plans to invest in the tourism product in Port Royal. The results of these talks, he said, should see much more activity “through for the remainder of the year”.
“I have just concluded some discussions with DP World, which could result in significant improvements in the European traffic into the Caribbean, mostly in Jamaica, with Port Royal being a critical area of consideration,” said Bartlett.
DP World is an Emirati multinational logistics company which is based in Dubai. The organisation specialises in cargo logistics, maritime services, port terminal operations and free trade zones. It was formed in 2005 following the merger of Dubai Ports Authority and Dubai Ports International. DP World handles some 70 million containers that are brought in by around 70,000 vessels annually, which equates to roughly 10 per cent of global container traffic accounted for by their 82 marine and inland terminals present in over 40 countries. Up until 2016, DP World was primarily a global ports operator, and since then it has acquired other companies up and down the value chain.
“I am pleased with our discussions so far here in Dubai and I am expecting that Jamaica will see some significant investments from these engagements here,” Bartlett added.
