Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett will have a busy round of activities attending Tourism Awareness Week, September 25-30, and meeting with other global tourism leaders in Saudi Arabia to press Jamaica’s quest for more visitors from the Middle East.

Highpoint of the week is World Tourism Day 2023 on September 27.

However, prior to taking off into the expansive tourism ecosystem, Bartlett, supported by his senior strategist in the ministry Delano Seiveright, who is already in Saudi Arabia, briefed the press on the performance of the Jamaican tourism industry and some of the developments he has been focusing on to help increase the country’s income from the industry.

For example, during the January to March 2023 period, it is estimated that Jamaica welcomed 1.18 million visitors, representing a growth of 94.4 per cent, when compared to the same period in 2022. This represents earnings of US$1.15 billion, 46.4 per cent above the US$786.8 million earned for the same period in 2022.

But, the minister insists that the Government can take it much further, and welcome as many as five million visitors and earn US$5 billion in tourism revenues in 2025. That effort is expected to benefit from a push to encourage over 500,000 visitors from Canada by 2025.

“Canada is our third-largest market, and we are currently at just above the 300,000 mark and getting to where we were in 2010 when we had up to 400,000 visitors from Canada,” the minister noted.

“My projections are driven by data, and I have evidence now that the Canadian market is ready to take up to half a million visitors within the next two years,” he added.

The minister plans to visit Canada soon to meet Canadian airlines’ executives who recently announced plans for flights from Toronto to Montego Bay twice a week, starting in November.

Saudi Arabia is the second biggest tourist destination in the Middle East, with over 16 million visitors in 2017. Although most of the tourism in Saudi Arabia still largely involves religious pilgrimages, there has been growth in the leisure tourism sector.

As the tourism sector has been largely boosted lately, the sector is expected to be the “white oil” for Saudi Arabia which proved that the sector can generate more than US$25 billion. Future projection for Saudi Arabia’s overall number of tourist trips is on course to be 93.8 million by this year, up from 64.7 million in 2018.

Hotels are no longer required to ask Saudi couples for proof of marriage for a check-in, and the Government is spending heavily on bringing various forms of entertainment, such as wrestling, tennis, car racing, expensive restaurants and concerts to expand tourism’s appeal.