Re­port­ing from Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

While Caribbean coun­tries con­tin­ue to bat­tle with crime, the re­gion re­mains a pre­ferred des­ti­na­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA) Nico­la Mad­den-Greig pre­sent­ed da­ta from a Mas­ter­card sur­vey at the Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place in Mon­tego Bay Ja­maica on Mon­day, which showed over 80 per cent of tourists felt safe dur­ing their va­ca­tions to the re­gion.

Ex­pand­ing fur­ther on the re­port to re­porters fol­low­ing her keynote ad­dress, Mad­den-Greig said there have been re­cent trav­el ad­vi­sories on Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas.

“We do have some chal­lenges do­mes­ti­cal­ly, we can say that in terms of the im­pact on vis­i­tors to the re­gion, it is neg­li­gi­ble. We do have in­ci­dents from time to time but with the over 30 mil­lion vis­i­tors that we have to the Caribbean re­gion, the im­pact in terms of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is less than 0.0001 per cent. So I think we are do­ing ex­treme­ly well.”

She not­ed, how­ev­er, these ad­vi­sories have im­pact­ed tourism cam­paigns as ad­di­tion­al re­sources have been re­quired for mar­ket­ing plans and to en­sure tourism safe­ty as op­posed to im­ple­ment­ing oth­er plans for tourism in the re­gion.

Asked about T&T’s crime sit­u­a­tion and how it is af­fect­ing the ho­tel in­dus­try, she said “Ho­tels in the Caribbean just have to en­sure the right mes­sage is go­ing out. We at CHTA have our own pub­lic re­la­tions agency,that we work with and so­cial me­dia is some­thing that helps us push off the Caribbean. The mil­lions of peo­ple that are vis­it­ing the var­i­ous coun­tries have been putting their mes­sages and ex­pe­ri­ences on­line. So noth­ing is bet­ter than en­cour­ag­ing your vis­i­tors on­line.

In Jan­u­ary, Ja­maica was list­ed as a lev­el-three des­ti­na­tion by the US State De­part­ment. Amer­i­cans were urged to “re­con­sid­er trav­el to Ja­maica due to crime and med­ical ser­vices.

“Vi­o­lent crimes, such as home in­va­sions, armed rob­beries, sex­u­al as­saults, and homi­cides, are com­mon. Sex­u­al as­saults oc­cur fre­quent­ly, in­clud­ing at all-in­clu­sive re­sorts,” the ad­vi­so­ry said.

The State De­part­ment ad­vised Amer­i­cans to avoid tak­ing pub­lic bus­es and walk­ing or dri­ving at night in Ja­maica.

The Ba­hamas was placed on Lev­el Two af­ter near­ly 20 peo­ple were mur­dered with­in the first few weeks of 2024.

Most of the killings were as a re­sult of gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Amer­i­cans were told to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion in the tourist hotspots of Nas­sau and Grand Ba­hama.

Da­ta from the trav­el in­dus­try an­a­lyt­ics web­site, For­ward Keys, showed The Ba­hamas and Ja­maica suf­fered a 24 per cent and 20 per cent drop re­spec­tive­ly in vis­i­tors from the Unit­ed States, fol­low­ing the ad­vi­sories.

De­spite this ad­vi­so­ry, book­ing vol­umes re­cov­ered to pre-cri­sis lev­els with­in two weeks in the Ba­hamas and four to six weeks in Ja­maica.

Con­nec­tiv­i­ty

Mad­den-Greig al­so called for greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty from the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket.

“We need to im­prove the air­lift be­tween the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, we feel it is an im­por­tant mar­ket. There are a lot of cul­tur­al syn­er­gies and I think we will con­tin­ue to work with some of our part­ners. While we are scratch­ing the sur­face with Colom­bia, more needs to be done. We can­not just fo­cus on the US mar­ket. We need to pen­e­trate oth­er mar­kets.