Visitor arrivals to Jamaica highest in history

Minister Bartlett participated in the launch of the ‘Meet Jamaica at London 2012’ initiative which was rolled out to key and influential business members of the UK Diaspora community as a build-up to the 2012 London Olympics.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, Monday March 21, 2011 – On the back of a long European trip which finished in the UK, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has announced a landmark for the tourism industry with the news that visitor arrival figures were at their highest in Jamaica’s history.

The announcement came last week as Minister Bartlett participated in the launch of the ‘Meet Jamaica at London 2012’ initiative which was rolled out to key and influential business members of the UK Diaspora community as a build-up to the 2012 London Olympics. This launch was then extended to Birmingham, an equally important region for investment in terms of the Diaspora.

“I feel privileged to announce that this week a total of 9,998 visitors arrived by air and cruise ship into the country which equates to the total number of visitors on the island being a massive 47,000 week ending, the highest figure since records began,” he said.

“This significant surge in visitor figures is testimony to a number of policies that we have put into place, such as recent legislation for casino and timeshare development and health and wellness implementation. It can also be seen through our adaptive pricing strategy, which we have aggressively applied over the past fiscal year. This has in turn provided huge value to the consumer holiday, without devaluing our rate structure.” 

The Minister also emphasized that the Jamaica Tourist Board would not rest on its laurels based on those impressive visitor arrival figures and outlined plans to address untapped areas of the market. 

“Our steps moving forward will be by way of a geographic strategy, identifying emerging markets which will in turn provide even greater visitation figures in the coming years. To simplify these areas, I’ve focused my proposals on two key demographic areas: BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and MIST (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey), all emerging markets that are looking for a quality destination product that Jamaica can offer them,” Bartlett said.

The Tourism Minister said investments were also vital to support Jamaica’s rapidly expanding and developing tourism product. 

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