Jamaican-born director at the Mastercard Economics Institute Roiana Reid said that she would readily recommend potential tourism markets that the Jamaica Tourist Board should target based on data gathered about the spending habits and the income levels of credit and debit card users across several jurisdictions across the world.

Reid made this bold statement during her recent presentation, “Unlocking Growth: Understanding the Global Consumer and Navigating Travel Trends”, at Mastercard Day Jamaica, during which Mastercard highlighted its capacity to track tourism spend across the world and go deeper into identifying the spending power of people in specific regions.

Speaking at the event, Reid pointed out that unemployment is at its lowest in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany — some of Jamaica’s largest tourism markets. Comparing the growth of wages in these jurisdictions to inflation, she then highlighted the spending power of those who travel.

“Broadly speaking, across these economies wage growth is outpacing inflation. That means that consumers have more real purchasing power, giving them opportunities to spend more on discretionary goods and services which, of course, includes travel and entertainment,” she shared.

Drilling down on Jamaica’s leading tourism market, the United States, Reid noted that states such as Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas have experienced strong growth in salaries and consumer spending over the last five years. This she attributed to migration patterns that favour people moving to the warmer southern states.

“So, if I were on the Jamaica Tourist Board, I’d recommend that we market more in these states because there are real opportunities for growth to capture these consumers which are doing really, really well,” she asserted.

Texas, Reid indicated, was one of the states to watch since most sectors experienced employment and income growth higher than the US average.

Last year in the US, spending on air travel, cruises and accommodations rose by 19.8 per cent when compared to pre-COVID levels. In terms of discretionary spending, travel-related expenses ranked as third-highest in payments, just behind ticket purchases for movies and/or live events and paid sporting events.

Moreover, in a survey of consumers, 22 per cent of respondents indicated plans to take a foreign trip in the next six months.

“Before the pandemic, we never had this much share and we’re literally at 45-year highs in terms of the share of responders who plan to travel abroad within the next six months,” Reid highlighted.

What’s more, as Jamaica continues to rank among the top-five destination for American and Canadian tourists, inbound cross-border spend last year rose by 20 per cent on account of an increase in spend on experiences. The top-three payment categories among travellers from the US and UK were: accommodation, food and vehicle rentals.

Payments for hotel services alone rose 48 per cent in 2023.

While dissecting purchases using corporate cards as against consumer cards, Reid shared that she believes there is space for tourism stakeholders to boost corporate card spend through business conferences, retreats and hosting remote employees.

In Jamaica, parishes seeing the largest share of card spending were: St James, Kingston and St Andrew, St Ann, Westmoreland, Trelawny, and Hanover.

Prior to COVID, tourists spent on average six days at destinations compared to 10 days during the pandemic due to quarantines. Since 2022, travellers from Jamaica’s main tourism markets spend on average eight days.