MONTEGO BAY, St James — Tourism officials expect smaller players to get their share of the half-billion US-dollar windfall generated from visitors who have been staying longer in Jamaica and spending more.

Director of Tourism Donovan White told a recent media briefing for travel writers, and local and international media that since the country welcomed back tourists in June, there has been an uptick in their length of stay from 7.1 days to eight days.

“We’ve also seen an uptick in the average visitor spend from US$169 per day per visitor to US$180,” he noted. “This is what has allowed us to forecast our revenue projections to just under US$2 billion for the calendar year. What that means is that, for the first time, our destination earnings are beginning to outpace arrivals, which is a good thing.”

He told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that small players in the sector stand to benefit, and not just the major operators.

“When guests tell us that their average spend in the destination is US$182 per day, that’s not what they spend in the hotel. That’s what they spend, in total, every single day that they are here. The way we have marketed tourism to entice our visitors to go out into the destination and explore all of Jamaica has allowed us to… put more of the tourism earnings back into the hands of our micro, small and medium business operators,” White said.

He added: “The money that is spent in the destination is spent at the restaurants, at the attractions, on rent-a-cars, on craft vendors, it’s spent on tour guides as tips. It’s spent in all parts of the country when they go out into the rural parts and they stop at the pan chicken man or the jerk corner or the bars.”

The half-billion US-dollar windfall is among the factors that have led to optimism that the sector’s return to pre-COVID-19 levels will be faster than originally expected.

“We see that happening round about Q3 of 2023 where we expect, at the end of 2023, to be somewhere in the region of about 4.1 million visitors, split between 2.5 million stopovers and 1.6 million cruise with a revenue outturn for the destination of about US$4.2 billion in earnings,” said White.

In 2019, he explained, Jamaica welcomed 4.2 million visitors which translated into US$3.7 billion in earnings.

“So there’s an uptick of about half-a-billion dollars in earnings that we anticipate. And this is coming from what we’re seeing in the average spend per visitor as well as the length of stay per person. So there are some really good things happening in the marketplace. There are some really good things happening in our destination where visitors are in fact staying longer and spending more,” White said.