Edmund Bartlett, Jamaican politician and former Minister of Tourism recently explained that the sector is on the way course to achieve “record -breaking growth” this year.
The first half of this year witnessed US$1.84 billion of revenue earnings, as confirmed by Bartlett. This was an increase of eight percent in comparison to the first quarter of last year.
At the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, the Minister was discussing on Wednesday, July 26th, session of the Jamaica 55 Diaspora Conference.
Jamaica greeted almost 2,165,330 visitors up till June of this year, which is estimated 3.9 per cent higher in comparison to the same time last year.
The first two weeks of July saw almost 104,098 stop over visitors. This accounts a massive 14.9 percent increase over the same period last year.
The powerful industry performance ever since the inception of 2017 is created on the success story of 2016, when the sector actually tried to expand by an extraordinary four percent with over 3.84 million visitors in total.
For the period, Gross Foreign Exchange Earnings went up to US$2.55 billion which accounted 6.2 percent, with stopover arrival earnings of US$2.4 billion, showing a 6.1 percent rise. On the other hand, cruise passenger earnings went up to US$148.6 million, up eight percent respectively. Despite these profitable numbers, Mr. Bartlett said the Ministry, its agencies and other key stakeholders were never satisfied and “we continue to revamp and intensify our strategies to identify key drivers of competitiveness and sustainable tourism development in Jamaica.”
