Neither the protracted and crippling intervention of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic nor the country’s highly publicized vulnerability to crime would appear to have diminished the international appetite for Jamaica as a favoured tourism haven.
And as the island last week welcomed its millionth guest for 2022, an astonishing feat for a country which, a few months ago, had been reflecting ruefully on the wider socio-economic effects of the pandemic across most sectors of the society, last Sunday’s Jamaica Gleaner (Jamaica’s tourism sector rebounds, not hurt by crime: Curtis Williams) was declaring that the country, its reputation as “one of the Caribbean islands with the highest murder rates,” notwithstanding, had “successfully navigated the risk to its brand and remains a safe destination for its visitors.”
While the tourism industry appears disinclined to conceal the reality of what the Gleaner report describes as the island’s “high crime and murder rates,” the island’s Director of Tourism, Donavan White is reported as saying that these considerations “have not deterred investments in the sector and the country is in an expansion mood………. From a risk perspective every investor has their risk tolerance and has their own risk analysis that allow them to make decisions on their investment. We have never had an investor who has turned down the opportunity to invest in Jamaica because of security reasons and that is a proud reputation that we have,” Whyte says. It is a pronouncement reflective of an astonishing level of official confidence in the durability of the country’s tourism industry.
Setting aside the uniqueness of the Jamaican culture, the vibrancy of its entertainment industry and its wealth of natural attractions, the Caribbean island is ranked among the least expensive countries for travel in the Caribbean.
What appears to have done much to ensure that the issues of crime and violence do not supersede the attractions of the country’s tourism industry is, according to White, the fact that the country has been focused on getting the message across that crime and violence affect less than one per cent of visitors to the island. “And so for us, in terms of ensuring that we provide an enabler area across Jamaica in terms of our resort areas, that provide a level of safety and seamlessness of movement for every tourist who comes into the country, is our pride and joy,” White is further quoted in the Sunday Business Guardian as saying.
In his comments the Jamaican tourism industry official displayed an openness about the country’s crime challenges not always evinced in the public comments of officials elsewhere in the region. “Like every country, right across this world, there are challenges with security at many levels, some more than some, I think what we have done is appreciated where we are in the management of our own security………… There is still lots of ways to go and there still are areas of our security governance that we have to improve, but we are acknowledging of that and we are recognizing that we have room to grow,” the Sunday Gleaner quotes White as saying.
