MINISTER of Tourism Edmund Bartlett says that it has become critical for the Government to put in place infrastructure to meet the changing demands of its visitors, as well as the global environment.

According to the minister, trends in the industry show tourists have become more sophisticated and have moved beyond the “sun, sea and sand” reason to travel and are compelled by their “passion points”.

“Consequently, we have had to be more agile and innovative in how we manage the product,” he told the House of Representatives in his contribution to the annual sectoral debate at Gordon House, on Tuesday.

Bartlett, speaking on the theme ‘New architecture to meet tourism demands’, said that these developments have led to a number of changes in the various agencies under the Ministry of Tourism.

He said that, in terms of the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), it has already begun a process of re-engineering itself and its methods of marketing and promoting Destination Jamaica to meet the needs of the emerging tourism source markets globally.

He said that to compete in the new global marketplace, the JTB’s number one strategy will be the development of a new, fully integrated website.

“This new data-rich, social media-integrated digital platform will revolve on a single axis that provides global access to the destination 24/7/365. This website will be integrated with Google and provide us the opportunity to access platforms such as Airbnb,” he added.

He explained that the new website will host and promote all aspects of the destination, and provide real-time access and content to tour operators and travel agents, globally, to be more efficient in selling Jamaica.

“We will have embedded a customer relationship management tool to real- time manage the performance of the more than 50,000 registered travel agents who sell the destination every day; and we will be able to perform, manage and incentivise them remotely to maximise our room and airline capacity,” he said.

He said that the return on investment on the move to “smart tourism” will be the ability to market the destination and manage the distribution of local content in a more precise and geo-targeted way to extract more value from advertising and promotions.

“The objective is to create efficiency and improve our capabilities in the digital marketing age. This transformation from a manual to more digital marketing system will allow us to utilise tools of cyber marketing which Jamaica has never seen. We can now better utilise the scarce advertising dollar in a more targeted way,” he noted.

Bartlett said that the country will also need to reposition and diversify its tourism products to make them more innovative and attractive to tourists.

He said that as of April 1 this year, the business model of the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) has been restructured to focus on developing innovative projects and enabling iconic attractions to be developed across the island.

Within the area of projects, TEF will also continue its role in ensuring destination enhancement by way of building out the physical infrastructure.

TEF will also be of particular interest to small and medium tourism enterprises, as it will provide entrepreneurs with information to modify their business models, as needed, to adapt to new trends in the industry and, by extension, keep their businesses afloat.

The new model will see TEF expanding to include new divisions, such as the Tourism Linkages Network, the Jamaica Centre of Tourism Innovation, and the Craft Development Institute.

On Jamaica Vacations (JamVac), Bartlett said that the inclusion of cruise to its portfolio has improved relationships with cruise lines, to include shore experience personnel.

“JamVac now has greater monitoring of the shore experience to ensure early response where there are challenges, working with agencies such as the Port Authority of Jamaica, TPDCo (Tourism Product Development Company) and local stakeholders to remedy any challenges, while ensuring that any fallout with the cruise lines are dispelled or, at the very least, minimised,” he stated.

He noted that JamVac has been influential in ensuring that the “perceived harassment” at ports is minimised, along with the help of government and private stakeholders, and was able to set up a dispatch system in Ocho Rios in 10 days that is having success.

Bartlett also noted that Jamaica’s cruise tourism is on a trajectory to making Jamaica the leading cruise tourism destination in the Caribbean.

Cruise passenger visits were 11 per cent higher than in 2016 and gross earnings from cruise passenger spend in 2017 was US$179 million, up 19 per cent from US$150 million in 2016, he said.