After years of talks, Jamaica is now ready to embark on multi-destination tourism as part of efforts to boost arrivals to the country.

“We are going to be experimenting with a product which will be a blend of Jamaica, Cayman and Dominican Republic experiences,” Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s tourism minister, said in a recent session with the Jamaica Observer.

“So for the first time, we are going to be packaging three countries as one. It’s not going to the market yet, but what we do is we have the partners, tour operators and media, etc, to come and experience and see how it works and then we can formalise it, codify it and develop a product with a price and a value proposition that we can take to the market.”

The idea has been discussed for much of the last decade, but was held up due to several issues.

“Most important of the hold-up is the public sector’s ambition to harmonise policies and to look at how we can facilitate travel with and across the region. Transportation has been a big issue. The second issue is visa,” Bartlett added.

He said issues with air travel in the region are improving with more direct flights amongst Caribbean countries helping to facilitate the planned multi-destination tourism efforts.

“What we needed was more inter-regional connectivity. And that’s beginning to happen. InterCaribe, for example, is now connecting St Lucia with Jamaica and is opening a new flight in another couple of days. Arajet is connecting Dom Rep with Jamaica and of course, we have the traditional legacy carriers such as British Airways, Caribbean Airways, Cayman Airways, Bahama Air.”

“We are beginning to see a lot more energy in air connectivity and that augurs well for the prospect of multi-destination tourism.”