ST JAMES, Jamaica – An announced plan by Flow to invest $US550 million in Jamaica over the next three years, has been welcomed by Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett as a boost to connectivity and tourism development locally.

Investment of the funds was announced by Chief Executive Officer of Flow’s parent company, Liberty Latin America, Balan Nair during a dinner at the Rose Hall Great House to wrap up the company’s board of directors’ meeting held in Montego Bay, St James recently.

“We have spent about US$550 million in the last 36 months. Liberty and Flow will spend the same amount, US$550 million in the next 38 months. We’re so excited about Jamaica,” said Nair.

Expressing thanks to the multinational telecommunications and entertainment company for investing in Jamaica, Bartlett reflected on the record growth in tourist arrivals pre and post COVID-19 and asserted: “We do this because we’re connected and your business is about connectivity and productivity, and you’re part of this great revolution that has now created not just a connected world but a hyper connected world.”

Bartlett added that “for the first time we’re beginning to see communication moving itself from the centre to the peripheries; it’s now knowledge that is available to anyone, to everyone everywhere.”

He said this level of connectivity was challenging what was being done and the way things were being done, and “tourism has been that vehicle through which global connectivity has been realised.”

“That’s what we do. We simply travel, move from one place to the other for the purpose of connecting with individuals, cultures and processes and redefining the way that relationships are understood,” he said.

He pointed out that this was being achieved through technology and that telecommunications infrastructure provided the backbone for that connectivity “which now provides for us the opportunity to bring consumption patterns to diverse places on planet earth.”

In doing so, “we leave a footprint of economic value, and Jamaica’s position as a destination has enabled us to earn in the last two years, US$7 billion and provided employment for 175,000 people directly and 354,000 indirectly,” Bartlett told the Liberty Flow directors.

In the same vein, Bartlett posited that the telecommunications industry was being challenged in its ability to drive the future of tourism “because our connectivity now is no longer dependent on our ability to move from one location to another but is contingent on our appreciation, our knowledge and ability to manipulate the virtual space.”