Preliminary figures available from the Ministry of Tourism suggest that Jamaica recorded double-digit growth in stopover tourist arrivals for the months of July and August, making it the country’s best summer for tourist arrivals ever.

According to Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, July and August recorded 10.8 per cent and 16.5 per cent increases in stopover tourist arrivals, respectively, totalling over 418,000 stopover tourists.

“We are getting more rooms, we are getting more airlift, we are getting more visitors, and we are earning more. Our work is speaking for itself. Nonetheless, we have a lot more work to do in broadening the reach of the tourism dollar, hence the aggressive work of the Adam Stewart-led Tourism Linkages Council in the ministry,” the minister said.

The growth is partly attributed to his quick start in pulling together a robust team to pilot the ministry and its agencies in a strategic and aggressive manner, focused on boosting arrivals and earnings and broadening the reach of the tourism dollar.

Jamaica earned a record US$2 billion during the first eight months of this calendar year from 2.8 million stopover and cruise visitors. The figure represents an increase of 8.3 per cent in gross foreign exchange earnings over the US$1.83 billion earned last year during the same period.

In addition, cruise passenger arrivals were up 5.1 per cent for the same period.

The increased numbers come after Bartlett completed a visit to some of the world’s largest and most influential mega-tech companies, including Google, Airbnb and Uber, in pursuit of enhancing Jamaica’s approach to tourism marketing and cutting-edge destination development.

Senior advisor/strategist to Bartlett, Delano Seiveright, noted that the leadership of Google highlighted a 10 per cent growth in queries from people in the USA on Google.com, for the 2017 winter tourist over the same time in 2016.

“Bartlett committed to immediate effect tie more strategically and directly Jamaica’s tourism marketing efforts with them, after all they are the most visited website in the world,” Seiveright explained.

Bartlett, Seiveright and Jamaica’s Honorary Consul to Los Angeles, Lorna Johnson, met and toured with Google leadership at its headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, recently.

Google informed the Bartlett’s team on how it generally works with government institutions worldwide, and gave sweeping statistical overviews of search traffic about Jamaica and the Caribbean and select Latin American countries on a whole.

“Google presented, in fairly good detail, how exclusive (anonymous) data/insights, for example query trends on Google on how people in the United States and Canada tend to search for Jamaica; the keywords and attributes they look for, which other tourism destinations persons search for after or before searching for Jamaica, and so on. It connects perfectly with his aggressive growth strategies,” Seiveright said.

Among some of the noteworthy facts, Seiveright pointed out, is that people in the market of trips to the Caribbean belong to highest income households in the USA vis a vis other digital users; that there are 3 million monthly queries on Google.com about Jamaica in the US; that Jamaica ranks near the top of searches for “Luxury Vacations”; and, that the US audience with household income above average or exceeding US$75,000 a year showing interest on traveling soon to the Caribbean are mainly between 35 and 54 years old.