Tourism sector sees record weekend visitor arrivals

The Ministry of Tourism is reporting that Jamaica is again breaking visitor arrival records, with some 27,000 tourists arriving on the island last weekend.

“The tourism industry is now poised for full recovery,” declared Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, in response to the four-day figures.

He cited the weekend as being “particularly strong in the context of Jamaica bouncing back from the devastation dealt to the tourism sector by the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.”

He added that achieving this record as the sector seeks to rebound from COVID-19 was of particular significance, as it coincided with the anniversary of Jamaica recording its first case of the virus on March 10, 2020.

Over the weekend, there were some 8,700 visitors on Saturday, the highest number for any given day since the reopening of Jamaica's international borders.

Bartlett saw this as “critical as it makes the point that the month of March, which traditionally is a good one for winter vacationers, has started out well with bookings indicating a very strong March, paralleling the corresponding month in 2019, which saw the best pre-COVID arrivals for the sector.”

He said the growing numbers augured well not just in terms of high accommodation in hotels but “this is very important to have our tourism workers back on the job, for our suppliers who were also hard-hit by the fallout but can now have some certainty in terms of the demand to be met.”

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