( L - R ) MORRISON and PETERKIN

Jamaica had more than 180,000 stopover arrivals in July, its highest volume ever in any single month, the tourism marketing agency said Wednesday.

The figure represents a 19 per cent increase over the 151,289 tourists who stayed here in July 2005.

The Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, while it could not quantify within any degree of certainty how much hoteliers influenced the record numbers, says it could be as much as a third.

"I can't give you a percentage of how much our members contributed, but for our group, the Sandals/Beaches brand, we spent somewhere in the region of US$40 million on advertising," said JHTA president and general manager of Sandals Montego Bay Horace Peterkin, Thursday.

"Other members like the SuperClubs chain and Sunset Beach also advertised aggressively, so we contributed a lot to the record arrivals in July."

For the calendar year to date, stopovers topped 1.07 million, an increase of 17.4 per cent, or approximately 159,000 over the 913,367 received for the same period last year.

Earnings

Using the average 2005 spend for stopover visitors/night of US$103.51, the July guests would have contributed earnings of US$18.6 million ($1.2 billion) to tourism.

"Our performance so far for this year has been strong, running ahead of projections, with record arrivals for each month of 2006," said JTB chairman Dennis Morrison, quoted in a Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) release on the numbers.

"I am encouraged with the direction of the industry and commend the efforts of all sections of the tourism sector for their contribution to the success being enjoyed."

Peterkin said Jamaica would also have got a bump from players like the Spanish chains, which have been very aggressive in their advertising campaigns.

"Airlines also contributed," he said. "We have 90,000 additional seats from Spirit Airlines, Virgin Airlines and other, so this has also been a major help, because they have a viable product."

Almost all markets performed 'credibly' in the July review period, said the Jamaica Tourist Board.

The United States, where 73.3 per cent share of Jamaica's tourism business orginates, accounted for 132,835 visitors in July - an increase of 16.2 per cent point on point.

Impressive result

In the meantime, Canada saw a 52.1 per cent increase, a result JTB pronounced "impressive", though the numbers at 12,295 stopover visitors were far below business from the U.S.

In July 2005, only 8,084 Canadians vacationed here.

Europe grew 17.7 per cent to 25,547 while Latin America had stopovers of a tiny 1,206, but which represented a huge jump of 67.7 per cent.

Morrison, pointing to ongoing sales blitzes and other initiatives, said he expects tourism growth to continue.

"These initiatives form part of an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at ensuring that the current momentum is sustained," said Morrison.

"I do expect that our figures will continue to grow over the remainder of the year and that Jamaica will improve on its record-breaking performance achieved during the 2005/2006 winter tourist season."

Hoteliers expect the fall season to be weak because of storm fears, but if the weather holds, "we can expect a 10 per cent to 15 per cent increase in arrivals this fall over last year," Peterkin said.

The winter season is looking good, the hotelier said, with the numbers indicating that business for that period might grow 17 per cent, well above the anticipated 12 per cent.

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