Visitors from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Jamaica’s major tourism markets, will not require the special Caricom visa to travel to the Caribbean during the months that the ICC Cricket World Cup is being played here, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) announced Monday.

According to the CTO, more than 95 per cent of the current visitors to the 10 Caribbean countries participating in what has been termed the Single Domestic Space will be able to visit for Cricket World Cup or for any other reason without the need to get a visa.

The countries to which the visa requirement does not apply are:

. All Caricom member states (except Haiti);

. Canada;

. France and its dependent territories;

. Germany;

. Ireland;

. Italy;

. Japan;

. Spain;

. South Africa;

. The Netherlands and its dependent territories;

. United Kingdom and its dependent territories; and

. United States and its dependent territories.

“All other nationals will need to apply for the Special Caricom Visa to visit any of the countries in the Single Domestic Space between February 1 and May 15, 2007,” the CTO said.

The 10 Caricom states participating in the Single Domestic Space are Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines, and Trinidad & Tobago.

“This will mean that during the period announced, visitors to these countries, once they have cleared Immigration and Customs at their first port of entry, will be free to travel to and within all of the other nine countries as if they were a single nation,” the CTO said.

The CTO announcement would have come as a relief to the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), which last week said it feared that the Caricom Visa requirement would result in a loss of business to the region’s tourism sector.

The visa is apparently being introduced to address security concerns associated with the staging of major sporting events, and last Thursday in Barbados, Caricom security ministers were adamant that they would not be making any changes to the structure of the visa regime.

On Friday, Jamaica’s tourism minister, Aloun Assamba, had said that the visa requirement would affect only five per cent of visitors to the Caribbean. However, on Sunday, JHTA president Horace Peterkin said that Jamaican hotels have already received cancellations. He also chided the Caricom ministers for taking too long to inform the sector of the measure.