JAMAICA needs to watch out for the growing détente between long-time enemies the United States and Cuba.

“Tourism is likely to be impacted,” according to Richard Byles, co-chairman of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC) and president and CEO of Sagicor Group Jamaica Limited. His company is directly involved in tourism through its investment in the Jewel Resort brand of hotels on the north coast.

Quite when Jamaica will feel that impact is anybody’s guess. The opening up of Cuba could be like a “big bang or a slow evolution”, Byles said. “We don’t know yet.”

But Byles thinks Jamaica will have time to prepare. “My bet is it will be a fairly prolonged process,” Byles said at the monthly EPOC press briefing at Sagicor headquarters in New Kingston on Tuesday.

Decades of animosity between the two nations began to show signs of breaking down in December 2014 when US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro simultaneously announced the release of various prisoners, the restoration of diplomatic relations and a loosening of the US economic, commercial and financial embargo — referred to as the blockade in Cuba.

Currently, most Americans are not allowed to travel as tourists to Cuba, as a result of US sanctions imposed against Cuba after Fidel Castro took over the country in a revolution in 1959.

Despite the travel restrictions, thousands of US citizens travel to Cuba each year, some via third countries such as Canada, Mexico and Jamaica.

There is a view in Jamaica that tourism will be hit particularly hard when American tourists can once again visit Cuba. But Byles is more optimistic.

“We need to look at opportunities to develop businesses over there and twin with tourism,” Byles said.

“In some timeline they will be right there in the marketplace and better they will be our partner than our competitor,” he said.

Meanwhile, Byles is not holding his breath on the development of a logistics hub in Jamaica. “It’s a great initiative; that, if it happens, could be game-changing,” Byles said. “But I’m not going to wait for that to happen.

“It is the Jamaican and foreign business community that is going to drive our growth,” he said.