MONTEGO BAY, St James — President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) Robin Russell says efforts to curb tourist harassment are paying off and the difference can be seen on the country’s streets.

“When people feel safer, when people can move around without being harassed, that’s what happens,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“It will definitely help us with our occupancies and travel advisories, etc,” Russell added.

He stressed that this will be good for small and micro businesses in the sector, not just the bigger players

“Everybody benefits; and not just the persons who are being harassed but every shop owner, ever bar owner gets the benefit. Because they become a part of tourism, which is the ultimate goal of everyone, that everybody gets to benefit from tourism,” said the JHTA head.

Harassment has been a challenge over the years, ranging from over-eager vendors to touts selling ganja.

Russell said a lot of work has been done through initiatives such as the Courtesy Corps, the Treat Our Visitors Right campaign and a variety of training programmes.

“We, the JHTA, partnered with Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) and other agencies in doing a lot of training,” he explained.

“We’ve done training with not only the hotels but the Jamaica Constabulary Force, Sandals. We’ve done a lot of work and sensitisation in trying to eradicate harassment. We are happy to see that the numbers are down and… our labour is coming to some fruition,” Russell added.

The JHTA president said anti-harassment training is now standard within the tourism sector.

“We put it in a way that it is added to curriculums when people are hired at hotels. We are not going to wait until it becomes chronic again, we are going to constantly work on that,” Russell promised.

“As people come into tourism they are trained, they understand what it is, they understand the benefits and they understand the risks to harassing [visitors],” he said.

He said it had been the plan, all along, to make fighting tourist harassment a long-term project.

“That was part of the development of the programme that it would be… continued [and] would be implemented as people come into the system,” Russell said.

He anticipates that improvements made will have a positive impact on the next travel advisory issued by the United States. During a recent visit by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he promised the Donald Trump-led Administration would take another look at the level three status Jamaica is currently assigned. Rubio’s comments were based on what he said were improvements made in curbing crime.

The JHTA’s Russell is expecting a favourable outcome of any review that takes place, partially because of a decline in harassment of visitors.

“We’ll continue to do the work to put Jamaica in a better place. There is more work to be done and we will continue to do the work until we get to at least a level two, a level one and we become the premier destination in the Caribbean,” he said.

JHTA President Robin Russell says major gains have been made in curbing tourist harassment.