According to the tourism minister, Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica, bar some upheaval, is on track to achieve the 5x5x5 equation that he set for this year.
That is, he expects that in 2025 the island will host at least five million visitors and gross no less than US$5 million from the tourism industry.
Mr Bartlett’s confidence was boosted by what he said was a strong December start to the winter tourist season, which caused him to project “a very strong first quarter of 2025”.
“That would set the pace for the rest of 2025, providing, of course, there are any other weather distractions and disruptions, as we call it,” he was quoted by the government’s Jamaica Information Service (JIS) as saying.
This newspaper, too, hopes that there are no disruptions and that Mr Bartlett not only meets, but surpasses, his targets.
We also hope, too, that the minister’s remarks provide a catalyst for a larger and deeper dialogue, on how Jamaica might more deeply integrate its tourism industry into the rest of the economy. We expect that John Byles, after his recent tentative, even if skewed, intervention in that discussion, will become a robust participant in the debate.
In that event, we commend to Mr Byles The Gleaner’s several recent editorials (including the one on which he commented in his January 3 letter to the newspaper) about tourism’s potential for deepening and broadening its linkages in the economy, in the context of a structured industrial policy for Jamaica.
ESSENTIALLY FLAT
In that JIS report, Mr Bartlett said that the island received 4.3 million visitors in 2024 and earned US$4.3 billion. That, on its face, suggests that tourism arrivals and gross earnings were essentially flat last year, which is not unexpected given the “disruptions” caused by storms in the summer and negative travel advisories by the US government against travel to the island because of Jamaica’s high levels of crime.
Mr Bartlett doesn’t appear to have directly addressed these issues, but stressed the capacity of Jamaica’s tourism industry “to respond effectively to disruptions”.
“…That’s resilience and that’s what has become a guiding principle for tourism management in Jamaica – resilience,” Mr Bartlett said.
Should the minister’s projections hold, Jamaica would this year have around 700,000 more visitors than last year. And if the usual ratio is maintained, nearly seven in 10 tourists will be stopover visitors, meaning that they didn’t come on cruise ships, so stayed in hotels, villas or private homes, and, on average, spent around eight days on the island.
Earnings from the sector, on Mr Barlett’s analysis, will in 2025 be approximately 16 per cent higher than the previous year. By government estimates, approximately 40 per cent is retained by Jamaica, paying for the goods and services consumed by tourists that are clearly anchored in the island.
In responding to The Gleaner’s observations about a recent spate of strikes at large, foreign-owned hotels, the JTB’s Mr Byles suggested that we may have missed the plot by, he said, focusing “ on the status quo rather than exploring untapped potential for greater economic growth”.
“While acknowledging tourism’s resilience and recovery from challenges such as hurricanes and negative travel advisories, there is an apparent missed opportunity in examining what could be done to further optimise this vital industry,” Mr Byles wrote.
OPPORTUNITY FOR DIALOGUE
Yet, the editorial, to which he referred, noted that the strike was another opportunity for a dialogue on an “industrial policy aimed at pushing tourism further up the food chain of global efficiency and exploiting its potential for linkages with the rest of the economy”.
Last May, on the back of an announcement by Mr Bartlett of a “multi-dimensional impact assessment” of the sector to help inform plans for the construction of 20,000 additional hotel rooms over the next decade, The Gleaner noted the opportunity for the study to be part of a “project of developing an industrial policy that, among other things, establishes strong and competitive linkages between tourism and the rest of the economy”.
The bottomline was to ensure that more than 40 per cent of tourism’s earnings stayed in Jamaica and with Jamaican firms.
When Mr Bartlett recently spoke of the relative success of the Alex digital system that links domestic agricultural suppliers with hotel buyers, we noted the US government analysis that 65 per cent of Jamaica’s US$1.4 billion food import bill was largely for tourism consumption and the estimate by local experts that between a fifth and a quarter of those imports could be substituted by domestic production.
“Agriculture and tourism are two sectors that are emblematic of the possibilities for cooperation and coordination in the drive for the strong and sustainable growth which (Prime Minister Andrew) Holness hopes to achieve,” The Gleaner commented.
This was in the context of Mr Holness’ recent announcement of his government’s “pivot” to a drive for robust growth, from its previous concentration on macroeconomic stability, which this newspaper has used as a platform for its advocacy for an industrial policy, among whose aim is for Jamaica to extract greater value from its tourism industry.
The Gleaner and Mr Byles, it seems, are in concert on this question.
This post was originally published on here
