Tourism surges in Jamaica with anticipation to earn over US$5M by 2025

The Minister of Tourism of Jamaica, Edmund Bartlett, has outlined that the country is experiencing an unprecedented surge in tourism infrastructural development as well as visitor arrivals. He said that this surge has laid the foundation for the Ministry to achieve its goal of attracting 5 million visitors in 5 years and this will earn the country over US$5 billion by 2025. While speaking during a press briefing at the 42nd Caribbean Travel Marketplace of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, the Minister said that the state of the tourism industry in Jamaica is very strong and rapidly flourishing. He also highlighted that the numbers show that the gross earnings for the 2023-24 fiscal year is projected to reach US$4.38 billion. Minister Bartlett revealed that so far this year, in just four and a half months, the island nation has already welcomed around 1.8 million visitors which comprised of 1.1 million stopover arrivals and 733,000 cruise arrivals. In addition to this, the tourism minister talked about the projections for May 2024 and said that by the end of this month, Jamaica will, for the first time in history, record 2 million visitors in stopover as well as cruise visitors in the first five months of the year. According to Edmund Bartlett, the current investment drive should see 20,000 new rooms added over the next 10 to 15 years with significant projects from reputable brands.During the briefing, the Minister also highlighted what tourism means to the Caribbean region post-COVID-19. He said that everyone in the Caribbean who are the most tourism-dependent region in the world, a dependence that reflects itself from 7 percent of GDP in Guyana to 95 percent of GDP in places such as Antigua and Barbuda and Aruba, which shows that over 20 percent of all the jobs in the region are driven by tourism. He also asserted that the Caribbean has now completely recovered from the fallout caused by the pandemic and added that tourism in the region is now growing in double digits over 2019.