DESPITE a plan by the United States of America to introduce its new passport regime on January 23 for visitors arriving by air, the Jamaica Tourist Board is projecting a 10 per cent increase in visitor arrivals for the upcoming winter tourist season, which begins on December 15, 2006 and ends April 15, 2007.

Jamaica had more than 800,000 visitors for the 2005/6 tourist season.

“As a government, we have been working for the past two years to ensure that everybody who plans to visit Jamaica is aware that they will have to have a passport to get back into the United States,” Tourism Minister Aloun N’dombet Assamba said at a press conference in Kingston yesterday.

“The fact that the United States has extended the period tells me that they are not prepared, but we are prepared,” she said. The minister was referring to the change in the start date of the US passport regime from January 8 to January 23.

“.We have seen no reduction in our forward bookings. In fact, the report we have from our private sector partners, meaning the hotels, is that they are very very pleased with the bookings they have from January to the end of this season,” the minister said.

She said, too, that checks done in August showed that 95 per cent of Americans visiting Jamaica were using their passports.