PLEASANT Holidays, one of America’s largest travel companies, is to start booking Jamaican vacations from October, and says that it has high hopes for the venture.

Officials expect to send up to 10,000 vacationers to Jamaica next year.

With Jamaica suffering from a sharp decline in visitor arrivals, linked to last September’s terrorist attacks in the USA and its own internal and marketing problems, the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) has welcomed the announcement by Pleasant Holidays.

“We are delighted to have become partners with Pleasant Holidays,” Donnie Dawson, the West Coast, USA regional manager for the JTB said in a press statement. “This alliance could not have come at a better time. It will have a major impact on bringing visitors from across the US to Jamaica.”

Dawson separately told the Observer yesterday that the Pleasant Holidays arrangement would particularly help with visitor arrivals from the western United States.

“We are going to be seeing visitors from the western US in particular,” he said. “It is going to be a boom for our national carrier, Air Jamaica…”

According to Dawson, the tour company was spending an estimated US$1-million to launch themselves into Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Their initial offerings for Jamaica will include all-inclusive resorts in Montego Bay, Negril and Ocho Rios.