Photo: Courtesy of visitjamaica.com. Tourism is booming in Jamaica.
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The Jamaica Government Information Service has announced that the opening of two new hotels in western Jamaica will create approximately 1,500 new jobs in the tourism industry.
Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett made the announcement while opening the 2024/25 Sectoral Debate in the House of Commons on April 30.
Bartlett said new positions will be created with the completion of more than 2,000 new rooms this year.
“We are opening 750 rooms at the RIU in Trelawny and expect to open in late May.” [the Princess Grand Jamaica] on green island [Hanover]there will be 1,000 rooms and it will provide a new wave of people with about 1,500 new jobs,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister Bartlett announced that 29 per cent of all visitors to Jamaica stayed in Airbnb.
“This is a new and dynamic business model that is revolutionizing the lodging sub-sector and generating income and resources for ordinary people across Jamaica,” he noted.
According to the data, last year Airbnb generated an estimated $31.8 billion in total revenue from 1.3 million guest nights.
As tourism continues to grow exponentially, preliminary total tourism revenue for the 2023/24 financial year is estimated at a record US$4.38 billion.
The number of stopover arrivals in 2022/23 is forecast to reach 2.96 million, an increase of 9.4% from the previous quarter, and the number of cruise arrivals is expected to reach 1.34 million, an increase of 9% from the previous quarter.
Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett said in announcing the figures that the US$4.38 billion in revenue was “the largest source of income from tourism in the history of the tourism industry”.
“As a result of this performance, some of the communities that were reeling from COVID-19 are now once again thriving centers of commerce and activity, providing more jobs,” he noted.
These results are particularly pleasing. Visitors are being turned away, even though the U.S. State Department currently warns that travel to Jamaica can be dangerous due to crime and limited access to effective medical care. This is because Jamaica clearly has millions of happy visitors.
Source: Jamaica Government Information Service.
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