President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) Horace Peterkin says the Government will need to pump close to US$5 million into the sector to implement strategies aimed at addressing the near three per cent decline in visitor arrivals since the start of the year.

Peterkin told the Observer that the JHTA and the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) recently met to examine the performance of the industry since this year and to identify the reasons for the decline in visitor arrivals.

He explained that among the initiatives required is a number of consumer-type programmes, as well as the utilisation of technology such as the Internet.

“There are plans to totally revamp the JTB’s website to make it more user-friendly and we will also have to do programmes with tour operators as well as marketing of smaller hotels,” he said.

However, Peterkin said all this will not be possible until the Government injects the money into the industry.

The JHTA head argued that while the decline in visitor arrivals had a lot to do with the new United States passport regime, it was not the only reason. The slowing down of the US economy, as well as the fact that Cancun in Mexico has reopened with a lot of visitors returning there contributed to Jamaica’s slide.

However, while the US market has declined, Jamaica has seen a 30 per cent increase in Canadian visitors.

“The Canadian economy is very strong because they now have a lot more money to spend,” said Peterkin.

As for the passport regime, which requires American citizens to have passports to re-enter the US, Peterkin told the Observer that the US postal system is overwhelmed with the number of passport applications as the process takes 10-14 weeks to be completed.

He said the time to process the applications is expected to be reduced significantly in the near future as a number of new processing centres are being opened.

He said that 18 million American passports are expected to be issued this year, putting the number of American citizens with passports somewhere in the region of 50 million.

The lengthy delays, he said, were further due to a clog in the system emanating from the fact that Americans who would normally drive into Canada are now required to have passports to re-enter the United States.