KINGSTON, Jamaica – Investors looking to do business in Jamaica will benefit from various opportunities made available through financial support and partnerships with local businesses.

President of Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro), Shullette Cox, noted that financing is becoming a more frequent occurrence, not just for smaller developments but also for substantial ones.

She was participating in a panel discussion at the Global Tourism Resilience Conference 2023, on February 15, at the University of the West Indies Regional Headquarters, Mona.

“We are finding in Jamaica that the financial institutions are stepping up and offering to finance projects that are not even Jamaican projects, and so that makes the country a lot more attractive, because that capital is available here,” Cox said.

Equally important to the financial support that is available is the feasibility of the local brands, particularly those within the hotel industry, partnering with larger brands.

“We have found that this has worked very well. As you know, Jamaica is home to its own multinational brands, and we are very proud of Sandals and the work that Sandals has done to integrate into the community, so when we talk about those linkages, Sandals has done very well with that,” the President shared.

“If you talk about local hotels that bring in the brands, both on the government and private-sector sides, we have seen a lot of success, because there is hotel infrastructure built by public-sector entities that are branded with international brands,” she continued.

Cox said that partnership has also worked very well for Jamaica, and as “we continue to grow the industry and branch out into other areas, we are seeing where our local developers of hotels are also getting their commitments”.

Meanwhile, the President said there are many brands currently in Jamaica that have a family of other brands.

“Let’s take the Marriott brand, for example, which has two [branches] in Kingston and a family of [other] brands. It has Delta and others that they want to carry to Jamaica as well, so there are a lot of partnership opportunities there with local developers that Jampro is facilitating,” Cox pointed out.

“We are talking about developers that are more integrated into the local communities, so that linkage that we are talking about is more likely to happen,” she noted.

The president said that as the country seeks to expand the tourism product beyond all-inclusive 600-room hotels, the opportunity increases for local companies to supply those kinds of hotels that are coming up, so that is another very important part of why diversification is important.