KINGSTON, Jamaica — A Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) team will visit China by month end, to look at the possibilities from Jamaica’s decision to conditionally waive visa requirements for tourists from China travelling to the island.

Director of Tourism, John Lynch told a meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) of the House of Representatives Tuesday that, with the announcement less than a week ago, the board needed time to assess the benefits.

“We will be going to China in two to three weeks to sit with the tour operators there, to find out what (are the possibilities),” Lynch said in response to a question from Government MP Denise Daley.

“So you need now to find out how the Chinese can rearrange their group travel arrangements to enable people to come to Jamaica freely?” PAAC chairman, Edmund Bartlett, asked.

“If it can be done,” Lynch responded.

Lynch told Daley that arrangements will be made to train the Jamaican workers to speak basic Chinese, in order to respond to the tourists.

“We started the Russian and Spanish (languages) and we want to expand it as rapidly as we can,” Lynch said.

“It makes a world of a difference, when a waiter or a bartender can tell somebody good morning in Chinese or Mandarin or Scandinavian or whatever. It shouldn’t be a fancy course, but a basic good morning or good afternoon.”

However, the Tourism Director said that the JTB would not be prepared to pay for television marketing in China.

“I don’t think it is within our capabilities but, using the assets that we have it is always possible to encourage television stations to come and do shoots,” Lynch said. “There are more cost effective ways, when you can’t afford television to get the word out.”

The Jamaican Government announced last week Wednesday that it has decided to conditionally waive visa requirements for tourists from China travelling to Jamaica, in order to boost visitor arrivals.

Minister of Tourism and Entertainment, Dr Wykeham McNeill, who made the announcement at Jamaica House, said that the waiver will come into effect within “a few weeks”, after the ministries of foreign affairs and national security, through the Passport and Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA), iron out the diplomatic details.

Balford Henry