If the re­cov­ery of its tourism in­dus­try were a race, Ja­maica has bolt­ed from the blocks.

Puns aside, Ja­maica’s tourism num­bers for 2023 have not just been im­pres­sive, it is on course to be record-shat­ter­ing.

Be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Ja­maica en­joyed the best tourism rev­enue year in 2019, but at the Ja­maican Prod­uct Ex­change (JAPEX) Ex­po in Mon­tego Bay last week, it was con­firmed that 2019’s tourism rev­enues had al­ready been dwarfed with an en­tire quar­ter of the year left.

“Ja­maica has been able to say to the world: Yes, we have re­cov­ered and we have re­cov­ered be­yond 2019. And this morn­ing, we are one of the few two coun­tries in the world that could tru­ly say that in two years we’ve moved from ze­ro, as far as the econ­o­my is con­cerned, to be now known as the hero of the econ­o­my,” said Ja­maica’s Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett at JAPEX’s me­dia break­fast on Tues­day at the Jew­el Grande Mon­tego Bay Re­sort & Spa.

“Tourism’s growth in the last nine quar­ters has been phe­nom­e­nal and the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic growth has equal­ly been phe­nom­e­nal. We didn’t quite go to ze­ro in terms of the over­all econ­o­my and tourism is the on­ly sec­tor that re­al­ly went to ze­ro,’ he added, point­ing to the fact that most ho­tels, restau­rants and oth­er at­trac­tions had been closed on the is­land as a re­sult of pan­dem­ic.

Ja­maica par­tial­ly re­opened the tourism sec­tor in a re­strict­ed man­ner in 2020, with tourist ac­cess al­lowed on­ly to the re­silient cor­ri­dors, which cen­tred around des­ti­na­tions like Mon­tego Bay, Ocho Rios and Ne­gril and se­lect tourist ar­eas in Port An­to­nio and Kingston.

How­ev­er the gov­ern­ment re­opened the sec­tor in a more com­pre­hen­sive man­ner in Ju­ly 2021 and the coun­try has emerged as one of the fastest re­cov­er­ing des­ti­na­tions post-COVID as a re­sult.

The re­cov­ery has been so im­pres­sive, Bar­lett ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­ceive 5 mil­lion vis­i­tors and US$5 bil­lion in rev­enue from tourism by 2025, which seemed dead in the wa­ter dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, is now firm­ly back in sight.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at the JAPEX Ex­po, Bartlett said the buy-in from the peo­ple of Ja­maica dur­ing this try­ing pe­ri­od, proved to be key to the is­land’s suc­cess.

“The se­cret to our suc­cess is the peo­ple, the peo­ple, the peo­ple, the peo­ple. And the fact that we’ve been able to get a lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion and a sort of uni­ty like we’ve nev­er seen in tourism in our his­to­ry. All of that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort is what has cul­mi­nat­ed in a kind of out­come that is start­ing back from ze­ro in 2021 and to­day, we are ap­proach­ing 4 mil­lion vis­i­tors and earn­ing over US$4 bil­lion. Un­be­liev­able so I re­al­ly want to con­grat­u­late the peo­ple of Ja­maica, all the part­ners who have made this pos­si­ble,” said Bartlett.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, this turn­around has been achieved with Ja­maica not re­ceiv­ing vis­i­tors from one of its more tra­di­tion­al mar­kets–Cana­da. The Ja­maican gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, had been hard at work to wel­come back some of its fa­mil­iar vis­i­tors soon­er rather than lat­er.

At the me­dia break­fast, Bartlett an­nounced that Ja­maica had signed a deal with Cana­da Jet­lines, with the low-cost air­line set to of­fer ser­vice to and from Toron­to and Mon­tego Bay from No­vem­ber 5.

That deal, Bar­lett said, was geared to­wards re-ig­nit­ing the con­nec­tion with that mar­ket.

“Re­cov­ery from the sec­ond largest mar­ket for us (which is) Cana­da was a lit­tle slow­er than the rest, be­cause Cana­da was among the last des­ti­na­tions to open. But dur­ing the pe­ri­od when we were in COVID, we were still talk­ing be­cause we had a sense that Ja­maica re­mained a strong and pos­i­tive des­ti­na­tion for the Cana­di­ans.

“So we had those dis­cus­sions and it came to­geth­er very quick­ly. To­day, we’re an­nounc­ing two flights a week, which is al­most un­re­al, as well, in that most times one flight, but this one, two flights a week is very sig­nif­i­cant. But we’ll get to four or five flights in short or­der,” he said.

How­ev­er, in the ab­sence of vis­i­tors from the Cana­di­an mar­ket, Ja­maica has seen a shift in terms of vis­i­tors to the is­land, with the Min­is­ter once again not­ing that the in­creased num­ber of African-Amer­i­can vis­i­tors to the is­land has not just im­proved the num­bers of vis­i­tors, but the rev­enue brought in­to the is­land.

“I must tell you, there’s been a lit­tle de­mo­graph­ic shift in the sense that there are far more Afro-Amer­i­cans com­ing to Ja­maica than pre­vi­ous­ly. And they have been big spenders. And that’s a good thing. So the ADR (av­er­age dai­ly rate) has shot up since COVID. And I think it has been sup­port­ed great­ly by this new de­mo­graph­ic the Afro-Amer­i­cans who have come to this coun­try,” said Bartlett.

This dis­clo­sure was sup­port­ed by the Des­ti­na­tion Up­date pro­vid­ed by Ja­maica Tourism Board di­rec­tor, Dono­van White, on the first day of JAPEX, which re­vealed that in 2022, vis­its had length­ened to just over eight days while dai­ly spend­ing had in­creased to US$183 a day.

In­deed, the Busi­ness Guardian en­coun­tered a cou­ple va­ca­tion­ing from At­lanta, while tak­ing the raft tour at the Chuk­ka Ocean Out­post at Sandy Bay, while an­oth­er group of African-Amer­i­can women took that tour and con­verged at the re­sort to cel­e­brate a friend’s 40th birth­day.

Tourism work­ers at Mon­tego Bay not­ed that apart from JAPEX, this was con­sid­ered a lull pe­ri­od be­fore the win­ter sea­son. How­ev­er they still ac­knowl­edged high­er than usu­al traf­fic for this pe­ri­od.

De­spite these surges, Ja­maica is not rest­ing on their lau­rels and in­deed is push­ing for more.

Bartlett con­firmed that Cana­da Jet­lines’s ad­di­tion, as well as in­creased seats from the US, had raised the num­ber of flight seats ex­pect­ed for the fall and win­ter sea­son to 1.1 mil­lion.

“That came to­geth­er for the ex­pan­sion of air­lift in the Unit­ed States. We have 140,000 more seats out of the US alone for this fall. And so when we add some new flights that are com­ing out of Cana­da, be­tween those two coun­tries have ac­count­ed for the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the air­line,” said Bar­lett, who al­so spoke of plans to at­tract vis­i­tors from In­dia with West In­dies leg­end Chris Gayle ex­pect­ed to play a role in that de­vel­op­ment.

The JAPEX con­fer­ence, which was the first to fea­ture vis­i­tors in per­son since 2019, no­tably in­clud­ed me­dia and stake­hold­ers from In­dia for the first time.

Bartlett al­so stat­ed that ne­go­ti­a­tions were un­der­way with an­oth­er fa­mous Ja­maican ath­lete, to pro­mote Ja­maica’s tourism push in Cen­tral and East­ern Eu­rope while the is­land is al­so eye­ing the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket.

The planned $70 mil­lion run­way ex­pan­sion of Mon­tego Bay’s Sang­ster In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, ​as well as the ad­di­tion of 8,000 rooms over the next two to five years, were al­so seen as pri­or­i­ties for the in­dus­try go­ing for­ward,

How­ev­er, Bartlett said Ja­maica’s suc­cess was not meant to di­min­ish the tourism push of the rest of the re­gion.

“The last thing I want to say on that is that Ja­maica’s re­cov­ery is not about com­pet­i­tive­ness, it is about co-pe­t­i­tive­ness, and we have to find a way to co-pe­te and to work with each oth­er and to use the as­sets of each oth­er to en­hance the glob­al good of tourism and the Caribbean,” said Bartlett.