Bartlett wants big shopping malls for cruise market - Dreams of future Jamaica as a shopping destination
Published:Wednesday | September 4, 2019 | 12:08 AM
Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett is still committed to growing tourism earnings to US$5 billion by the time he leaves office, saying that has been the pace of inflows outperforming the last 40 years.
He is more than a billion dollars shy of the target.
The minister, speaking at a press conference called yesterday to discuss relief efforts for the Bahamas, which has been affected by Hurricane Dorian, and to review industry projections, said that he expected a 10.2 per cent improvement in revenues towards year end 2019.
Beyond that, Bartlett is touting the prospects for growth in cruise tourism and its spin-off effects on the retail market.
A western cruise route with Jamaica as the centrepiece will be reinstated in 2020, he said, and that Jamaica would see pass-through business from a new port in The Cayman Islands.
Currently, the tourism minister said cruise brings in about US$200 million annually, or representing an average spend of US$100 per cruise passenger, which accounts for about one per cent of tourism revenues for Jamaica.
He wants to grow the average spend to US$250 per passenger, primarily by improving shopping experiences for tourists. Those ambitions are driven by market preferences as 67 per cent of visitors travel for shopping opportunities. Right now, Jamaica has limited products and is not positioned to entice that type of tourist.
“You will see that shopping, proportionally, will be in the region of one per cent. From extrapolation, it’s about US$200 million. We have to increase that significantly,” said Bartlett. “I want our cruise spend to move from where it is to US$500 million. That’s where the Bahamas is. That’s where St Croix is. That’s where St Martin and little Cayman is. “We are in the cellar, so to speak, of the shopping spend.”
Under the plans and programmes aimed to reposition Jamaica as a shopping destination, an artisan village is set to open in Falmouth in December. It is meant to encourage artisans to produce more items for the shopping /cruise market.
Bartlett also said secured approval from the Ministry of Finance for the sale of textiles and leather as non-duty items.
“We had to lobby the minister of finance and also get Customs on board,” he told the Financial Gleaner on the margins of his press conference.
The products, he said, would fall within the in-bond arrangement for now, but he is already visualising large shopping malls near cruise ports in the future, where guests could also shop.
Bartlett also said that he was still targeting his goal of ‘five in five’ – revenue of US$5 billion for the tourism sector by year five of his tenure in the ministry.
The minister has previously noted – and reiterated Tuesday – that it took Jamaica 40 years of tourism earnings to make its first billion, a mark it hit in 1995. The second billion was earned in 2010, and the third came in 2017.
Last year, tourism earnings grew to US$3.3 billion. So far in 2019, the ministry has estimated inflows at US$2 billion in revenues up to June.
Visitor arrivals are also up, including from South America, which have spiked 22 per cent, and the United States, up 17 per cent year to date. Jamaica now gets 14 weekly flights from South America.