From left: Shonda McClaine of the Philadelphia Tribune, Lena Katz of Playboy SCOUT and Steven Kapol of Talent in Motion in discussion during the JAMAICA Jazz and Blues Festival on January 22. - Photo by Janet Silvera
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has announced a 3.4 per cent increase in visitor arrivals for the month of January, compared with the same period last year.
Bartlett said the 138,000 tourists who visited the island last month were the largest number of visitors to vacation in Jamaica in the month of January in any year.
The minister was addressing journalists during a press conference at the Ministry of Tourism on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston on Wednesday.
Intense advertising
Bartlett credited the growth to the staging of the annual JAMAICA Jazz and Blues Festival held last month, as well as the intense advertising, marketing and promotion campaign that the ministry had embarked on in recent months, especially for the start of the winter tourist season.
"At the first week of January, we were down 6.4 per cent, the second week we were down 0.3 per cent, the following week we were up 1.3 per cent, then 0.8 per cent and the three days following that, we were up 51.1 per cent," he outlined.
"The point is that we saw the spike during the two weeks when the festival took place and if it was not for the staging of the festival, the overall growth in arrivals in January would not have happened," he informed.
He said a large portion of the visitors who came to Jamaica during the festival were Jamaican nationals who came back for the event. He said hotels both large and small in the Montego Bay area were filled to capacity.
The tourism minister further told journalists that despite the economic downturn in major markets overseas last year, Jamaica experienced a four per cent growth, with a total of 1,769,271 stopover arrivals and US$2 billion earned in revenue.
US arrivals in the lead
He said the United States continued to dominate arrivals, with some 1,150,942 visitors, representing an increase of 1.6 per cent over the previous year. Europe followed with 284,700 visitors, an increase of 1.5 per cent. Canada, however, had the biggest growth, with arrivals increasing by 3.9 per cent.
Bartlett said stopovers from the Caribbean showed outstanding growth, increasing by 6.8 per cent, while the Latin American market grew by 32.5 per cent.
New Yorker Yaneisha Welds adds to the aesthetics of the Tourism Village at the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival on January 23. - Janet Silvera Photo