THE Skift Research Global Tourism Outlook 2025 poses an interesting question: “If 2023 was the year of revenge travel and 2024 the year of normalisation, what will 2025 bring?”

Global tourism performance per stopover arrivals was 89 per cent of 2019 arrivals for 2023, and is projected to be 98 per cent of 2019 arrivals for 2024.

The Caribbean, one of the most tourism-dependent regions of the world, recorded strong stopover arrivals for 2023 and 2024. For 2023 the Caribbean achieved 107.9 per cent of 2019’s arrivals. Some outstanding performers were the Dominican Republic, up 25 per cent; Curacao, up 25.6 per cent; and Turks and Caicos, up 36.2 per cent over 2019.

Jamaica was up 7.7 per cent over 2019 while Cuba was down 43 per cent below that benchmark year.

For 2024, recovery in the majority of Caribbean destinations continued apace. As at November, Curacao was 20.7 per cent up on 2023, Aruba up 14.4 per cent, Barbados was 10.3 per cent up, and the Dominican Republic up 6.4 per cent. Cuba was down 7.9 per cent.

Jamaica was 0.8 per cent down January to September 2024 versus 2023, and this suboptimal performance can best be attributed to (a) an updated travel advisory from the US State Department issued in the first quarter discouraging US citizens from visiting Jamaica; (b) Hurricane Beryl’s brush with the island at the beginning of July; and (c) disruption of service by hotel workers in multiple hotels late summer into the fall.

The question posed in the Skift Research is therefore very relevant for Jamaica: What will 2025 bring?

With thousands of additional airline seats secured for this winter, it is anticipated that Jamaica will have a good winter season. Jamaica’s continued success in attracting investments in new rooms, however, (over 1,700 in 2024 alone), along with the exponential growth in the Airbnb/villa business, has caused some degree of angst among hoteliers. The primary concern is whether there will be enough arrivals to allow hotels to maintain decent occupancies at realistic rates in 2025, given the increased room inventory.

On both occasions while I served as director of tourism I used to remind my colleagues that whereas the role of Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) was to bring “the world” to Jamaica, it was the role of the private sector to determine where everyone stayed.

As a passionate believer in the resilience of Jamaica’s tourism and as one who wants to see continued and consistent growth in the industry, I have a few recommendations that I believe will assist in maintaining growth in arrivals and should help reassure the accommodation sector that there will be enough business for everyone.

Latin America

JTB needs to get behind the new LATAM flight with a major advertising and promotional programme in order to ensure that the flight not only does well on the current schedule but increases frequency sooner rather than later. An effective campaign in markets like Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Peru will not only help this flight but will also enhance the load factors on Copa Airlines.

UK/Europe

(a) There needs to be a stronger push of the mid to high-end/luxury market in the UK such that British Airways can be persuaded to return to Montego Bay. It needs to be able to fill the Club Class seats in the front of the plane.

(b) JTB/JAMVAC needs to aggressively pursue securing more air seats from Europe. Jamaica should be seeing more business from Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, etc. The planned weekly charter from Portugal this summer is a step in the right direction, but there should be a lot more European arrivals.

(c) What about Spain? The arrival of the major Spanish hotel chains in Jamaica was supposed to be a catalyst for growth from Europe; that still needs to happen.

North America (USA and Canada)

The US market is the one causing the greatest concern among hoteliers. This concern stems from the dilemma of a marginal increase in airline seats versus a significant increase in beds from both hotels and Airbnb. Although there is already talk about the authorities securing more airlines seats for Jamaica, it is more important, at this time, to fill the existing airline seats by creating the necessary demand. When that demand is created, load factors will increase, and airlines traditionally respond to consistently high load factors by increasing service/seats to the destination.

In conversation with multiple partners in the travel trade, I have been advised that Jamaica is not visible in the market. I am fully aware of the digital marketing campaign that is currently taking place because I see it online. However, if the trade is complaining about the destination not being visible, this should be of major concern. Here are some important facts that should be taken into consideration going forward:

The digital marketing and online campaigns primarily serve the millennials. There are currently 72 million Baby Boomers, 65 million Gen-Xers, and 72 million Gen Y/millennials in the US population. The millennials are one-third of this total. The Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers have more time and resources, which make them most likely to travel.

Baby Boomers and many Gen-Xers still consume their news and information from traditional media, while millennials do so primarily from digital sources. Whereas Jamaica’s digital campaign may be reaching the millennials, being absent from traditional media means that JTB may be missing that lucrative two-thirds Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers audience. Having a presence in all forms of media (traditional, digital, social, etc) will create the demand necessary to fill current available airline seats.

Last, but not least, I would like to commend Adam Stewart and his Sandals team for the Jamaica Love programme which was executed in October 2024. For this programme, almost 1,000 travel advisors from across the world were brought to Jamaica and immersed in the destination. It is my understanding that the returns from that programme are already evident in forward bookings. This was a gift to Jamaica.

JTB and JHTA need to replicate that programme in September/October of this year and bring no less than 1,200 travel advisors/meeting and incentive planners, etc to the island for a six-day immersion in the destination.

Not all the recommendations outlined above can be implemented right away but some need to be treated with the urgency of now. Securing more air seats from Europe by JAMVAC, for example, will take a bit more time but the planning and negotiations should begin as soon as possible, considering that there are additional hotel rooms in the pipeline to come on stream over the next couple of years.

It’s about a month into the winter season and indications are that the winter will be good. However, winter ends in three months. What should we expect for the rest of 2025?

Paul Pennicook is a former director of tourism, former hotelier, senior airline executive, and is the CEO/founder of Pennicook and Associates, a hospitality and tourism consultancy based in Florida.