Having undertaken an assessment of the tentative re-opening on June 15 of the country’s tourism industry, which had been hastily closed in the wake of the rampaging COVID-19 pandemic, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett is doubtless far from happy with the picture that has unfolded before him. What has greeted him are summer tourist arrival figures that are less than a third of normal levels.
Last Sunday’s Jamaica Gleaner disclosed that since the country re-opened its borders to visitors, a paltry 120,000 visitors have shown up, that number being less than a third of the normal tourist inflow for the particular period. Spending by those numbers would earn for the country’s economy approximately US$150 million, some 30% of what tourism customarily brings to the economy during the summer.
Still, the Gleaner says, Bartlett surmises that the country may well be spoilt by the customarily higher numbers and that it still must be thankful for the business that it is getting.
According to Bartlett, even at 30% of the customary numbers, Jamaica – the most popular tourist destination, usually raking in around more than four million tourists annually, numbers that leave more than US$3 billion behind – is still well ahead of its counterpart destinations in the region. Still, Jamaicans find it difficult to reconcile themselves to earnings from the sector that are projected to fall below US$900 million annually, according to an article in the Sunday August 30 Gleaner.
In the same article Bartlett makes the critical point about the need for the island to “find a way to keep a delicate balance between keeping the economic wheels turning while maintaining tight control over the possibility of a massive outbreak of COVID-19. That, indeed, is the primary challenge confronting all of the heavily-dependent-on-tourism territories in the region.
Concerned about the possibility of a massive outbreak of the pandemic, Jamaica is currently focussing on what Bartlett says is the first for any market, “the establishment of a COVID-Resilient Corridor, extending from Negril in the west to Port Antonio in the north east” that will allow for access by the island’s Ministry of Health and Wellness to tourism entities operating on the coast.
“The COVID-Resilient Corridor is a model to the world as to how best to manage visitors during this challenging period. What it does is to create a pretty much sterile area that allows for good management, keeping the visitors within that geographical boundary and reducing the possibility of community spread,” the Gleaner quotes Bartlett as saying. Some tour operators on the island are reportedly pushing for an extension of the corridor.
