ROSE HALL, St James — As the Ministry of Tourism moves to deepen and strengthen the visitor experience across all parishes to make the product more shock-resilient, Minister Edmund Bartlett has reiterated the need for members of the diaspora to become even greater involved.

Noting that significant investments will be required as efforts are made to ensure “every parish becomes a part of the tourism experience for all”, Bartlett pointed to the critical importance of balancing local versus international players.

“One of the risks involved in building resilience is ownership and ownership structure: domestic ownership versus foreign ownership. We want to emphasise a greater incidence of local ownership in the tourism sector in Jamaica, and you in the diaspora must play an important part in doing this for us,” encouraged Bartlett.

He was addressing the 11th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James, on Tuesday. He encouraged individual participants to help develop products in the parish of their birth, for example.

“You’re from all the parishes; deepen that process,” Bartlett urged.

In further making his push for resilience, he pointed to the danger of heavy reliance on just some sections of the country long billed as tourist resorts — a vulnerability exposed during last October’s Hurricane Melissa.

“When Montego Bay was down and Negril was down, the world thought that Jamaica was down. We now need to deepen the tourism experiences across the parishes of Jamaica,” the minister stressed as he admitted that this will require funding.

According to the Bank of Jamaica, the Jamaican Diaspora sent an estimated US$3.49 billion back home through remittance inflows during the 2025 calendar year. This represents a 3.8 per cent increase compared to the US$3.36 billion recorded the previous year, and which accounts for a significant portion of the country’s economy.

The primary source markets are the United States of America at 67 per cent, the United Kingdom at 11 to 12 per cent, Canada at 9.6 per cent, and the Cayman Islands at 6.3 per cent. Bartlett, who said most of that money is spent as disposable income, would love to see about five per cent of that pumped into the economy in a way that can generate returns.

“We need a portion of that for investment into assets in Jamaica and to own the tourism assets of Jamaica,” stated the minister.

The conference, which runs from June 14 to 18, is being held under the theme ‘Diaspora Partnerships: Rebuilding a More Resilient Jamaica’.

In addition to financial investment, Bartlett also highlighted diaspora members’ enormous capacity to become ambassadors of resilience worldwide.

“For us, you are the source of great knowledge,” he said.

“You are engineers, you are doctors, you are lawyers, you are aeronautic experts. You are drivers of various types of weather-related responses. You work in meteorological offices and spaces all over; some of you work at NASA [the US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration], and what you have is a repository of knowledge which is critical to us in building our capacity for resilience in Jamaica. We want to draw on that,” said Bartlett.

“You are the power that resides in critical spaces of influence and corridors of power. You interact with the leaders of the world and the financiers of the world. We want you to bring that kind of resource into Jamaica to enable the building of resilience to sustain our ability to develop and grow and to expand the economy of Jamaica,” Bartlett added.

The minister further encouraged the diaspora to partner with Jamaica to achieve three main goals. He listed the first one as the sharing of expertise on how to better manage the environment and spaces; implement strategies to prevent, mitigate, manage, recover quickly; and thrive after disruptions. The second goal is to bring financial and capital backing to build local response capacity. The third is to act as part of a wider marketing network that connects with the world as the country seeks to diversify its tourism product and attract more visitors.

Bartlett also called on members of the diaspora to be ambassadors of the Jamaican story.

“Your words about us resonate more than the advertisement that Donovan [White, director of tourism] and the [Jamaica] Tourist Board puts out,” said the minister.

“Your blogs, your
TikTok — the influencers who are here – what you say, your videos in half a second, change the views of what
CNN puts out in 30 seconds, because you have credibility and you have access. I want you to use that to change the… paradigm and to get the world to recognise the truth of Jamaica and not the beliefs about Jamaica or the perceptions about Jamaica,” the minister appealed.