NEGRIL, Hanover — Noting that some hotels in the resort town are reporting a double-digit increase over 2019’s forward bookings, President of the Negril Chamber of Commerce Richard Wallace is urging tourism players to get ready for the expected boom.

“Some hotels are seeing bookings that are over 30 per cent higher than 2019 bookings [for summer leading into winter] which are pre-COVID. So this surge and pent-up demand, we are seeing it happening now,” said Wallace, who is also a Negril hotelier.

“That is phenomenal. That is incredible right there, and it shows that we are going to have a boom after the pandemic has passed. We are going to have a boom in tourism and I would encourage all of us who are in the business of tourism to get ready, prepare as much as we can. Those who are struggling at least have some hope that we should see things coming back to normal and even better in the near future,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Vaccinations are underway in several countries that are key markets for the country’s tourism industry. Wallace, who is the owner and operator of the Boardwalk Village Hotel and the Boardwalk Shopping Village in Negril, is convinced that people who are being vaccinated would be comfortable travelling.

“Having taken the vaccine, they are eager to get back out there. They are eager to come to Jamaica. So that in itself is a good thing. All we have to do as a country now is to make sure that the process is not prohibitive; meaning it is easy to travel to Jamaica. If they have to go through a lot of testing, quarantine and all this headache, that will turn off a lot of people,” Wallace argued.

The Government’s stance is that visitors to the island still have to be quarantined for 14 days even if they have been vaccinated, as they may still be able to transmit the virus to others even though they are protected.

Jamaica recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus on March 10, 2020. Then, on March 21, 2020 the country’s sea and airports were closed to incoming passenger traffic. The Government later reopened the country’s borders to incoming passenger traffic, on a phased basis, on July 15.

Then on December 21 last year, the Government placed a ban on flights from the United Kingdom, joining several countries in restricting travel from Britain over concerns of a new strain of the novel coronavirus that was spreading out of control. That ban is still in place.

A few weeks later, Canada suspended airline service to Mexico and all Caribbean destinations until April 30, 2021. This is in addition to a requirement for those entering the country to self-isolate for 14 days and pay a quarantine fee of CAN$2,000 for people travelling from Jamaica to Canada by air.

However, the US, which is another key market for Jamaica remains open.