Visitor arrivals to Jamaica for the first half of this year rose by 17 per cent when compared to the corresponding period last year, proving to be one of the few positive indicators from the economy.

STEWART. Jamaica's tour-ism sector has done well despite Jamaica's negative image with crime

According to government released data, visitors from the United States still comprise the vast majority of stopover arrivals. The month of June saw 124,709 stopover arrivals, representing an increase of 20 per cent. Visitors from Canada rose by 33.3 per cent (that is 7,877 stopover arrivals).

A little over 19,000 stopover arrivals was from Europe representing an 11 per cent increase.
These figures are very encouraging for the tourism sector and the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) puts the upsurge in visitors to the island down to the added airlift from the United States. Seventy per cent of Jamaica's visitors come from the United States.

Between May and December of this year, 200,000 people are expected to fly into Jamaica.
Many of the country's major hotels are reporting high occupancies.

Speaking with Caribbean Business Report, Chairman of Sandals and Beaches Resorts Gordon 'Butch' Stewart said:" Air Jamaica has developed a number of routes and other airlines have followed them. The increased airlift has helped. From October 2005 to the present, things have been good. We have enjoyed a windfall from visitors who would have gone to Cancun. The natural disasters in both New Orleans and the Far East have also helped us.

"However Cancun's tourism product is staging a recovery and it will come back with a competitive ferociousness and we may well find the going tough in the September period.

There is a high demand for Jamaica as a tourism destination

Stewart said that the Jamaica's tourism sector has done well despite Jamaica's negative image with crime and it is still regarded as a leading destination. He said poor infrastructure more particularly the roads from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios was prohibitive to the sector in that part of the country where all the leading hotels are located. He pointed out that this observation was not lost on the travel agent community.

"Blue-collar arrivals are going to go up particularly with the additional rooms. Some work has to be done on the more high end visitor looking for a Jamaican experience," added Stewart.
Riu is establishing a presence on the Jamaican hotel landscape and with three hotels and another two earmarked for construction, the Group's faith in Jamaica is evident.

Director of operations at Riu Jamaica Daniele Camponovo said 2006 has been a very successful year for Riu in Jamaica. " "There is a high demand for Jamaica as a tourism destination."
Its 846-room hotel, which is located at Mammee Bay, St Ann is reporting occupancy of 99 per cent.

Leader of the Opposition, Bruce Golding is calling for the repositioning of Jamaica's tourism marketing strategy to facilitate the more than 10,000 hotel rooms that will be built over the next five years. Golding is of the view that a failure to adopt a new marketing strategy will lead to the discounting rates and a "watering down" of the tourism product.

At this point in time there are 22,000 hotel rooms and the marketing strategy you employ with those cannot be applied with 35,000. If we are not careful we could be running into problems where we will have to discount those room rates significantly because the marketing programme to support these additional rooms is not in place."

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