FALMOUTH, Trelawny — Former Tourism Minister Dr Wykeham McNeill on Thursday cast doubt on the visitor arrival numbers for 2024 reported by the Ministry of Tourism as the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) continued its campaign ahead of the next general election due by September this year.

“I hear the minister [of tourism] talk ’bout him have how much arrivals, and increase, and [all] that. You have to watch the figures good because last year, 2024, we actually had a decrease in arrivals to Jamaica,” McNeill told PNP supporters at a spot meeting in Water Square, Falmouth.

“The problem with that is that we have, according to the minister, over a thousand new rooms. So if we have less people coming and more rooms it mean say some people a get hurt. We have some problems that we have to resolve in tourism,” he added.

McNeill did not provide any statistics to back up his claim but last week the State news agency, Jamaica Information Service (JIS), reported Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett as saying that the island earned US$4.3 billion from the industry in 2024, with some 4.3 million visitors.

Bartlett said the sector finished the year strong, despite the slight shortfall in arrival figures due to aviation disruptions, Hurricane Beryl, and geopolitical issues such as travel advisories.

“We had 68,000 less seats into Jamaica, which meant there was a natural reduction in the projected figures in terms of arrivals. Tourism, as you know, is resilient. Notwithstanding those disruptions we are coming out of the year with a small increase in arrivals — but the earnings are in line with what we projected,” Bartlett told
JIS.

Thursday’s meeting followed a tour of sections of the Trelawny Northern constituency which McNeill will contest in the election.

In his address, McNeill also argued that not enough people in Trelawny Northern benefit economically from cruise passengers, and argued that what now obtains is not inclusive tourism.

“You have to use it as a catalyst to make the lives of the Jamaican people better. So when you get up and you say two million people come, three million people come, that don’t mean nothing to anybody. What means [something] to people is when they stand in their shops they feel people coming in and buying something out of dem shops, or dem can get a good job, or dem can sell something as a farmer,” McNeill said.

“That is what we are going to do in tourism — and we are going to do it. And we [are] going to do it in Trelawny because Trelawny… and North Trelawny in particular, is the new frontier of tourism. This is the future and we have to do it right,” he added.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding, who was on the tour, argued that small operators in the sector, including craft vendors, are not getting enough of the tourism spoils.

“I visited several craft markets in the last couple of years — here in Falmouth, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios — several. The other day I was there with Comrade McNeill and others and the craft vendors are getting a raw deal in the country. We have a tourism industry which is growing and growing — they talk about how much billion US worth of revenue it is earning — but the people are not feeling the fullness of that — in fact, they [are] just getting the crumbs. And sometimes they don’t even get the crumbs, and we have to fix that,” Golding said.

“We need a new deal for our craft vendors and all of the small business operators who serve the tourism industry… and the tourism workers themselves. We need to have a better arrangement in the industry where there is a common set of minimum standards that make sure that tourism workers are treated fairly and decently. And any business people know that if you have staff that are happy and feel comfortable, they are more productive and they will generate better outcomes for your business. So, it is a win-win situation if you have the right mentality,” he said.

The Jamaica Labour Party’s Tova Hamilton, an attorney-at-law, is the sitting MP for Trelawny Northern.