For decades we measured success by how many visitors we welcomed. The question now is: How much value does each visit create for the guest, investor, and Jamaicans? Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has framed Tourism 3.0 in exactly these terms — a shift from a visitor economy to a value economy.

The numbers make the case. In 2025, Jamaica welcomed 3.7 million visitors, 2.6 million of them stopovers, and earned roughly US$4 billion.

Hurricane Melissa explains much of the decline from 2024, but it does not explain the figure that should concern us most — average spending per visitor per night held flat at US$192. In 2019, it was US$168. In 2022, it was US$180. In six years, the value of a Jamaican visitor night has risen by about 14 per cent.

The regional benchmark

Across the wider Caribbean, hotels averaged US$350 a night in 2025, up 2.1 per cent, even as regional occupancy softened to 63.7 per cent. The region is growing its earnings by raising the value of each room, not simply by filling more of them. Industry estimates place Jamaica’s average daily rate at about US$287, more than US$60 below that regional benchmark.

Who is leading? Turks and Caicos, with about two million visitors a year, posted an average daily rate of US$1,544 in the first quarter of 2025, the highest in the region, and continues to open new upscale product. Aruba’s hotels averaged close to US$400 a night through the first 11 months of 2025, up 12.5 per cent. Barbados, with roughly 707,000 stay-over visitors who stay close to 12 days, lifted revenue per available room by more than 16 per cent in the first nine months of 2025 on the strength of higher room rates.

Each of these destinations has built its rate deliberately, through a tier of product positioned at the top of the market and policies that protect it. Jamaica, with its scale, its culture, and its global recognition, is exceptionally well placed to do the same.

What our pipeline tells us

Jamaica’s hotel investment pipeline is strong. According to Government of Jamaica filings, Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro) — the national investment promotion agency — supported more than US$4.2 billion in hotel projects in the last fiscal year, expected to deliver almost 9,000 rooms and about 25,700 jobs. That is a vote of confidence the country should welcome. Those rooms bring airlift, employment, and distribution, and Jamaica needs every one of them.

But the pipeline is weighted almost entirely to scale. Its anchors are integrated and large-format resorts of roughly 950 to 1,600 rooms each. There is no comparable pipeline for the low-density, high-rate tier that is driving the region’s rate growth. And some of the branded projects most associated with the upper market are among those delayed, waiting on financing and certainty.

A mature destination needs a full ladder. Volume gives us reach and an elevated product gives us rate. In 2025, two of our international airports handled 3.9 million air seats at a load factor of 80.6 per cent. That airlift is exactly what a luxury brand looks for before it commits. The opportunity is to build the next tier on the platform we already have.

Elevated brands choose places where the surroundings are protected, density is controlled, and the rules will hold for 30 years. That is why the prime minister’s signal that zoning is on the horizon matters so much. What will determine its success is how well it is carried through: clear density, design and environmental standards, a single and predictable approval path for investors, and heritage towns and inland communities brought into the plan from the start. Done well, elevated zones will sit alongside the areas where large-format resorts continue to grow, and each tier will strengthen the other.

Where community

High-value visitors pay for what cannot be copied — our food, our music, our craft, our landscapes, and our people. The evidence is already in front of us. Overseas visitors who came for Carnival in Jamaica in 2025 spent an average of about US$5,300 each, and most said they travelled specifically for the event. Experience drives spend.

The next step is to bring that same pull to our towns. Jamaica already has the raw material. Falmouth’s Georgian streets host guided food and heritage walks. Middle Quarters is known island-wide for its roadside cooks. Accompong draws visitors to its Maroon celebration every January. Community tourism networks are already taking resort guests into villages to meet Jamaicans where they live. What is missing is elevation: the design, training, finance, and curation that turn a roadside stall into a chef-led dining room, a farm into a coffee or rum tasting, and a craft yard into an artist’s studio worth a premium.

Imagine a heritage town where Jamaican entrepreneurs run the restaurants, the tasting rooms, the galleries, and the guided experiences, each built to the standard a high-value guest expects, and each unmistakably local. That town becomes a reason to stay longer and spend more, and the money it earns stays in Jamaican hands.

This is where Tourism 3.0 and the rate agenda meet. The minister’s framework is built on stronger linkages and greater local ownership across the tourism value chain. Elevated development, properly planned, creates the demand that makes those linkages pay. It brings guests with the means and the appetite for authentic experience and sends them beyond the hotel gate into our communities as customers, not spectators.

Infrastructure must lead

None of this holds without the foundations. Hurricane Melissa took about 6,200 rooms out of circulation, and hotel employment ended 2025 at roughly 36,000, still 30 per cent below 2019. We are rebuilding regardless. The question is whether we rebuild to the same standard or to a higher one.

A premium rate carries a premium expectation from the moment the guest leaves the airport. Roads, water, power, sewage, broadband, and public safety are part of the product. Each area identified for elevated development should be matched with a funded, sequenced infrastructure plan so that capacity arrives ahead of the rooms, not behind them. The same roads and utilities that serve a resort serve the communities around it.

The moment is ours

The arithmetic is simple. With 2.6 million stopover visitors staying roughly eight nights each, every additional US$10 in nightly spend is worth about US$200 million a year to the Jamaican economy. Closing even part of the gap with our regional peers would be transformative.

What gets focused on gets done. Jamaica has the brand recognition, the airlift, the workforce, and the investor confidence to take this step. What it needs now is focus, and that is a charge only the Government can lead. Who will own this agenda with the authority to carry it across ministries and agencies? Which brands are we setting out to attract, and who is having those conversations today? What is the timetable for the zoning framework, the standards that come with it, and the infrastructure behind it? And how will we measure progress in average rate and spend per visitor night and report it publicly so that every Jamaican can see the value being created?

These are no longer questions of whether, but of who and when. Answer them clearly, publish the plan, and the investors and brands will follow. The Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) stands ready to sit at that table and share the work.

As Brand Jamaica, we built a destination the world wants to visit. The next chapter is building one where every visit is worth more to the guest and to Jamaica.

O’Brian Heron is president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association.

O’Brien Heron.