MONTEGO BAY, St James — A seven per cent increase in stopover arrivals for the first two weeks of December and yesterday’s coming of 12,000 cruise ship passengers to Montego Bay and Ocho Rios has sparked renewed optimism that the winter tourist season will be successful.

“The 2010/11 winter season has really begun with a bang!” said an elated Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett as he reviewed yesterday’s official start of the winter tourist season.

“Against the background of a seven per cent increase in the first two weeks of December, the season begins today with 6,000 cruise passengers in the Montego Bay port and 6,000 also in Ocho Rios, a grand total of 12,000 today and that certainly is the largest number of cruise arrivals we have had in a day for quite a while,” the tourism minister said.

The cruise passengers arrived on four vessels, two of which stopped in Montego Bay and two in Ocho Rios.

Bartlett noted that “the expectation for the winter season of course is for five per cent increase overall coming on the heels of a 9.3 per cent last year.”

He observed that yesterday’s large number of cruise ship passengers was but a taste of the expected success the new shipping pier in Falmouth — scheduled to welcome over 7,000 during each call next year — will enjoy.

“This (yesterday) morning was a nice little (preview) for us… as to what it is going to look like when you have 7,000 passengers and crew coming off in Falmouth. When we saw (the) logistics required this (yesterday) morning in Montego Bay to deal with the 6,000 passengers who came in, it really set my mind thinking as to how we will deal with the additional numbers that will be coming in at Falmouth,” Bartlett said.

Yesterday’s beginning of the tourism season also marked changes to the Tourist (Duty Free) Shopping System Act, which now allows incoming visitors to shop at the in-bond shops located inside the airport.

“I am very pleased to announce that starting today, incoming visitors to the airport will now be able to purchase duty-free items inside the inbond shops,” Bartlett announced.

His comments came at the Sangster International Airport as he and a strong delegation of officials from the tourism ministry and the Jamaica Tourist Board officially welcomed the first stopover visitors for the winter season.

Bartlett recalled that an amendment to the new shopping act was passed in Parliament last year, but “the process was just completed”. He said that the policy change will “allow us to improve in value, and revenue the impact of shopping to the economy”.

“It is a policy that we have been pursuing of enabling Jamaica to be (also) known as a shopping destination,” Bartlett said.

Pearline Murray, her son Dennis Murray, and his wife, Jennifer were welcomed as the first stopover arrivals for the winter tourist season. They came on-board a Jet Blue flight out of Orlando, Florida, USA.