How tourism driving the economic recovery
Since its reopening in June 2020, the tourism sector has been driving the economic recovery of Jamaica’s economy, through a steady increase in arrivals and tourism earnings.
preliminary figures indicate that since the reopening of the tourism sector on June 15, 2020, Jamaica has recorded a total of 816,632 stopover visitors and generated earnings of approximately US$1.31 billon (J$196 billion), over the one-year period.
The earnings from the sector included US$1.2 billion in visitor expenditure; US$28 million in departure taxes; US$19.5 million in passenger fees and charges; US$16.3 million in airline passenger levy; US$8.5 million in hotel room taxes and US$8.1 million in airport improvement fees
“Tourism recovery is on the horizon. The tourism sector is rising like a phoenix from the ashes. This more positive outlook for 2021 will also improve the destination’s estimate of earnings from US$1.6 billion to US$1.93 billion, an improvement of US$330 million
The Ministry credits this improvement to the robust health and safety protocols for the sector as well as the establishment of the Tourism COVID-19 Resilient Corridors, which have seen a very low infection rate of 0.6%.
“May 2021 showed a remarkable increase in visitor arrivals and overall stopover arrivals, increasing steadily from mid-month consistently to the end of the month. Load factors recorded for May 2021 averaged 73.5%, this is against the forecasted 50% average load factor for 2021, 9.3% less than the 83.1% load factor achieved in May 2019,” he explained.
The Ministry remains cautiously optimistic of cruise passengers starting to return around July/August. The first cruise out of North America to the Caribbean took place very recently and that has heightened expectations of more setting sail soon.
