Building a Better Jamaica

Monday, January 04, 2010
Jamaica Observer

CLOSE to 100,000 visitors, escaping the icy chill of the North, have arrived here since the start of the winter tourist season, which began on December 15 and ends in April 2010.

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett gleefully declared it yesterday as the "best ever" winter season in recent years.

Bartlett said that approximately 20,000 visitors had arrived within the last few days, on top of the 34,000 in the first week of the season and over 40,000 in the second. He said as many as 50 flights on some days were landing at the Sangster International Airport in the resort city of Montego Bay, St James.

"On Christmas Day, for example, we had at least 50 flights coming into Montego Bay," Bartlett told the Observer, adding that the airport has had record arrivals of aircraft.

Additionally, Bartlett said there had been a significant increase in the number of private jets which arrived in the island over the last couple of days.

"There was capacity parking at the jet port and yesterday I counted 11 small jets there," he said.

He said that these were mainly high-end visitors who stayed at top-end villas, noting that hotels and villas were experiencing high occupancy and in many cases full capacity from Negril, Westmoreland to Ocho Rios, St Ann.

The minister attributed this success to "very strong connectivity that Jamaica now has", under the government-guaranteed American Airlines deal which opened up

new gateways in the US to Jamaica.

A majority of the visitors over the past few weeks came from Canada and the United States, Bartlett said, adding that there had been increased arrivals out of Canadian gateways, particularly out of the northwestern side of that country.

– Ingrid Brown