Unrelenting marketing combined with smart and aggressive advertising designed by a re-energised tourist board prevented Jamaica from sliding further into the hole that the America-led war on Iraq created for world travel earlier this year.

Data from the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) showed that the island welcomed a total 1,211,796 stopover visitors for the January-November period, an increase of 6.1 per cent over the same period last year, while cruise passengers for the same months totalled 1,012,979, up 35.5 per cent.

Preliminary data from the JTB for the first three weeks of December indicated an increase of 13 per cent (75,000) in stopover arrivals, compared to 66,000 for the same period last year, putting the island on course for the 1.3 million stopover arrivals projected by the JTB in October this year.

Overall, the JTB expects that 2.3 million tourists will visit the island this year, a projection that even the state agency’s most ardent critics will find difficult to challenge, given the increase in airlift into the island and the decision by major cruise liners to increase calls on Jamaica.

“We have lots of seats,” quipped Paul Pennicook, the director of tourism, at an October Forum on Tourism at the Hilton Kingston Hotel where he, other government officials, and representatives from the JTB’s public relations agencies in North America and the UK outlined the island’s communications strategy.

At least six chartered services operating a total of 16 weekly flights, and 12 carriers running a combined 272 scheduled flights weekly are contributing to Pennicook’s boast by bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors here over the December 15, 2003 to April 30, 2004 winter tourist season.

Among the airlines offering chartered and scheduled service to Jamaica now are LTU, which brings visitors out of Germany mostly for cruise vacations on Seetours’ AIDAaura, which home-ports in Montego Bay; Britannia, with one weekly flight out of London, Gatwick; Skyservice, offering six weekly flights from Toronto; Condor, which is flying three times weekly out of Frankfurt and Munich, Germany; Martinair, with one weekly flight from Amsterdam, The Netherlands; American Airlines, running 42 flights weekly; and USAir, with 36 flights weekly.

Add to those, Air Jamaica’s 139 flights to Jamaica weekly from North America and Britain and one can appreciate the broad smiles and high anticipation in the tourism industry these days.

JTB chairman, Dennis Morrison, while acknowledging the role played by the tourist board and its partners in aggressively selling Jamaica in the market, gave a lot of kudos to Air Jamaica for making other airlines aware of the fact that Jamaica is a viable destination.

Pennicook agreed: “A lot of credit must go to Air Jamaica for opening certain gateways,” he told the Observer last month. “That has been a catalyst for the growth in airlift Jamaica is experiencing now. Other airlines saw what was happening and came into the market.”

The aggressive marketing of the island was also utilised in the cruise shipping industry with major emphasis placed on home-porting, according to William Tatham, vice-president of Cruise Shipping and Marina Operations at the Port Authority of Jamaica.

“We have been targeting home-porting as an area of future growth for the sector,” said Tatham. “Companies such as Seetours and Sun Cruises have signed up because they want to take advantage of Jamaica’s geographic position in the Western Caribbean, as well as what we have to offer as a destination.”

Late last month, UK-based Sun Cruises’ Sun Dream began home-porting in Montego Bay, while Radisson’s Seven Seas Navigator and Oceana Cruises’ Regatta called on Port Antonio.

The Port Authority expects that well over 5,000 cruise passengers will arrive in Port Antonio over the winter season.

This influx in cruise arrivals was enhanced by Jamaica’s early adjustment to tighter port security demanded in January by US cruise liners still nervous after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on America that sent the worldwide travel industry into a slump.

Not long after the bombing of the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, a Port and Maritime Security Act went to the US Congress, authorising Americans to refuse entry to ships coming from a port which they considered to have “ineffective security measures”.

The impact was similar to the category rating for airports, from which Jamaica suffered in the mid-1990s, under which the US deemed Jamaica’s aviation oversight capabilities to be inadequate and therefore limited Air Jamaica’s ability to operate in the United States.

Among the changes demanded by the Americans was for taxis to park in a holding area and allowed on the pier in smaller numbers at the time they were required.

Security on the water side of the facilities also had to be improved, resulting in no boat being allowed closer than 150 yards to a cruise ship.

But even as the Port Authority continued to upgrade the island’s port facilities, remnants of a controversy from the previous year continued to dog the JTB, as the agency announced that it had sent a report of a forensic audit of its New York office to a local criminal lawyer. At the same time, a dismissed senior executive from that office sued the JTB for wrongful dismissal.

The audit was ordered last year August when an anonymous e-mail began to circulate, accusing senior JTB New York staff of bad management, misappropriating government resources, influence peddling and downright fraud.

At the height of the controversy, in September 2002, Noel Mignott, the influential deputy director of tourism, who was in charge of the New York operations, where he served for over two decades, resigned his job.

A week later, the JTB said it had fired the New York office’s advertising relations manager, Marie Deeble-Walker, saying that it had lost “confidence in her judgement as a senior officer”.

It also accepted the resignation of Yvonne Sawyers, the accountant/manager.

The country has not yet been told if a decision has been taken by the criminal lawyer as to the course of action open to the JTB, but Deeble-Walker’s US$20 million suit was settled out of court.

Early in the year, the JTB also made a bid to acquire the Internet domain name jamaica.com from the current owners, Caribbean Online, a Canada-based firm that essentially sells vacations to the Caribbean.

The JTB had approached the company via letters of request and visits by the JTB representative in Canada to interest them in acquiring the domain name. But the approaches did not yielded any fruit.

At the time, the JTB said it was planning to appeal to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the United Nations body that has responsibility for promoting the protection of intellectual property globally.

However, the JTB, apparently conscious of the many hurdles, including cost, it would have to clear, settled on establishing visitjamaica.com, which it now shares with the local industry, offering update access to those listed.

But the US-led war on Iraq started looming, and airline industry officials began warning of its devastating effects on an industry that was still struggling to recover from the plunge in air travel sparked by 9/11.

“Earnings are down significantly, and in a high fixed cost business when your revenues are down that spells trouble,” explained Christopher Zacca, deputy chairman and CEO of Air Jamaica, which, like other airlines around the world, felt the reverberations of the terror attacks.

The airline industry, officials said, had lost an estimated US$9 billion the previous year. Air Jamaica, in response to its own losses, cut 25 senior executives and four non-managerial posts from its payroll.

“.In light of the pending war and the deteriorating conditions in the industry, there was no other choice,” Zacca said.

Despite the pleadings, including from the United Nations, the Bush administration, joined by close ally, Britain, invaded Iraq, eventually toppling the Saddam Hussein regime.

With the war on in earnest, Air Jamaica cut by 18 per cent its service to US gateways and proposed a reduction in employee working hours.

But the war, coupled with the SARS outbreak in Asia, offered a positive spin-off to Jamaica and the Caribbean, as more tourists looked to this region as a safe vacation destination.

Jamaica’s tourism officials, led by a new JTB board of directors, successfully rode that wave, sparing no effort in their marketing, promotion and advertising campaigns.

At the same time, Pennicook, who was appointed director of tourism in March, was quietly making significant changes to the operations of the much-criticised JTB.

Ostensibly, he reorganised the agency, cutting administrative costs and channeling those savings into advertising and marketing, moves that were welcomed by the industry.

Other highlights of the year:

. The Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay was divested to YVRAS Consortium of Vancouver;

. Grupo Pinero, one of Spain’s major hotel owners and operators, bought a 200-acre property at Pear Tree Bay on Jamaica’s north coast, where it plans to build three 600-room hotels geared to European travellers;

. Other Spanish hotel chains have bought land here and are among a raft of investors planning to build more than 4,000 new rooms;

. Sandals announced that its new $75 million property at Whitehouse in Westmoreland will be opened in October 2004; and

. Cruise arrivals topped the millionth mark.