TRELAWNY, Jamaica — Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has highlighted that Jamaica was able to host a mass virtual wedding for 140 couples during the heights of COVID-19 because the destination kept in touch with the world throughout the pandemic.

Bartlett was addressing a stakeholders meeting at the Falmouth Mystic Flavor on Friday. The meeting followed the minister’s Destination Assurance Tour of Falmouth, his fourth across the country.

“This market never lost touch with the external marketplace. We were constantly Online, being virtual, and we did some extremely innovative things. For example, we actually married 140 couples across the world during the pandemic. None of them came to Jamaica…I think some of them are coming now to have the wedding reception… and do other things. But at Laughing Waters we had this massive (virtual) marriage ceremony where we had over 140 couples from different destinations across the world. We had a reverend there and of course I was the emcee. And we were able to do a mass virtual wedding,” the tourism minister said.

“We promoted, we gave information, we kept our customers attuned to how we were managing the pandemic,” he added.

Another innovation during the pandemic he underlined, was the resilience corridor.

The resilient corridors which encompassed the majority of the island’s tourism regions, provided the opportunity for visitors to enjoy more of the country’s unique offerings, as many coronavirus (COVID-19) compliant attractions, located along the areas, were authorised for visits by the health authorities.

“We established another innovation which today stands out as one of the most important innovations in tourism. During the pandemic we established the first and only still surviving today resilient corridor which was our model that would enable safe, secure and seamless experiences for tourism,” Bartlett said.