More than one million people are expected to travel to Jamaica from the US over the winter tourist season. The figure is up 13 per cent from a year ago.

Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett said the surge in airlift is in anticipation of a record winter tourist season.

“To date, 10 airlines have some 5,914 flights booked out of key US gateways to the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay and Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston between January and April 2024, adding to the flurry expected over the 2023 Christmas holiday period,” Bartlett explained.

The line-up of airlines for the period includes American, with 305,436 seats booked on 1,727 flights; Southwest, logging 106,925 seats on 611 flights; Delta, with 205,776 seats on 1,119 flights; JetBlue, with a total of 242,347 seats on 1,434 flights; United, booking 92,911 seats on 525 flights; and Frontier flying in with 25,482 seats on 137 flights. Other airlines with flights booked over the period are Spirit, Sun Country, and ALG Charter, with a combined 65,677 seats on 361 flights. Additional airlift is also slated to come from Caribbean Airlines, flying out of New York.

“These numbers reflect the ongoing effort of the Ministry of Tourism, through the Jamaica Tourist Board as our marketing arm, working alongside our international and local partners in the travel and hospitality sectors, to ensure continuous growth in our tourism industry,” said Bartlett.

He also disclosed that “already, for the period January to November 29, 2023 preliminary figures indicate that some 2.5 million stopover visitors have graced our shores, accounting for an 18 per cent increase over the same period in 2022 and a 10 per cent increase over the same period in pre-pandemic 2019.”

“If we continue on this impressive growth trajectory we will be on track to meet our new projections of four million visitors and foreign exchange earnings of US$4.1 billion by year end,” Bartlett said.