Tourism Driving Jamaica’s Economic Recovery Since Reopening

  • Tourism Minister, Hon. Edmund Bartlett has revealed that since its reopening in June 2020, the tourism sector has been driving the economic recovery of Jamaica’s economy, through a steady increase in arrivals and tourism earnings. 
  • Minister Bartlett expressed that “preliminary figures indicate that since the reopening of the tourism sector on June 15, 2020, Jamaica has recorded a total of 816,632 stopover visitors and generated earnings of approximately US$1.31 billon (J$196 billion), over the one-year period.” 
  • He emphasized that this is further proof that the tourism sector is on a steady path to recovery. Minister Bartlett adds that “for the current calendar year, the Tourism Ministry is reforecasting to deliver 1.61Mn visitors against an earlier estimate of 1.15Mn, an improvement of 460,000 more visitors.” If this is realized, total visitor arrivals would be 2.62Mn below the total 4.23Mn arrivals reported in 2019, but 0.28Mn above total arrivals in 2020. 
  • The Minister credits this improvement, in part, to the development of robust health and safety protocols for the sector as well as the establishment of the Tourism COVID-19 Resilient Corridors, which have seen a very low infection rate of 0.6%. He also noted that the measures enabled Jamaica to welcome some 342,948 tourists during the first five months of this year (January to May). This is 1.65Mn and 0.68Mn below the total arrivals after the same period in 2019 and 2020, respectively. 
  • However, given that this 5-month total represents 36,675 more visitors than that recorded from June to December 2020 (following the reopening of the sector), there has been gradual improvement in the sector supported by the vaccine-led recovery in source markets, particularly the US.  
  • The Ministry remains cautiously optimistic of cruise passengers starting to return around July/August. The first cruise out of North America to the Caribbean took place very recently and that has heightened expectations of more setting sail soon.

(Source: JIS & NCBCM Research)