Global Courant 2023-04-25 14:16:13
The number of tourists from the country increased almost 100% in the first quarter, and there are long queues and long waits.
The number of tourists in Jamaica increased almost 100% in the first three months of the year, so much so that huge queues and long waits were formed at the island’s main airport.
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said the problem stemmed from a shortage of staff to process the large number of arrivals at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay since the end of the pandemic.
Bartlett later declared before Parliament that there were 1.18 million arrivals between January and March, 94% more than in the same period in 2022 and a record for the Caribbean nation’s tourist season.
Arrivals at Sangster airport grew almost 100% annually. Photo Shutterstock
“The recovery has been stronger than anticipated and all the countries are having difficulties at their airports because … (many) of the employees have not returned,” Bartlett said.
Less bureaucracy and expansion project
He added that the authorities plan to invest in new technologies to eliminate paper bureaucracy at the airport, such as the entry forms that visitors must fill out upon entering.
The Jamaican Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, said for his part that the problems at the airport underscore the need to approve the expansion project of the facilities, at a price of 70 million dollars.
The airport is facing an improvement project. Photo Shutterstock.
The project is estimated to be completed by 2025, and Honess said the improvements to the airport – the largest and busiest in the Caribbean – “will make Jamaica more attractive and more competitive with other countries in the region, which have also invested considerably to improve its infrastructure”.
As part of the project, the runway is being expanded at a cost of $34 million, work that is projected to be completed in June.
“We are excited that Sangster will be able to host the major airlines that will be flying to Jamaica and the Caribbean,” Bartlett said last week.
The crystal clear waters of Montego Bay in Jamaica.
The boom of the Caribbean
To put the situation in Jamaica in context, it should be noted that after the drop in tourism due to the pandemic, the Caribbean began registering records for tourist arrivals last year, with record numbers of visitors to beaches in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. , an almost total recovery in Colombia and advances in Cuba, although it still lags behind the region, like Jamaica, which is experiencing this growth situation this year.
In 2022, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, a country that concentrates almost half of the international tourism in Latin America, recorded a record of more than 30 million arrivals at the Cancun airport, according to the state government.
For its part, the Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic reported that it registered 7.1 million tourists by air and 1.3 million by cruises, which exceeded the pre-pandemic level and reached record numbers in 2022, and the World Tourism Organization Tourism (UNWTO) recognized the country for its “exemplary” tourism recovery.
Cancun Beach, another destination with great tourist growth. Photo EFE/ Alonso Cupul
Puerto Rico’s tourism sector also achieved a record in 2022, both in jobs in the industry (more than 91,000) and in income from lodging (1.6 billion dollars) and passengers at its international airport (more than 10 million).
And finally, Migration from Colombia highlighted that tourism practically fully recovered after the pandemic, with more than 3.5 million international travelers between January and October 2022, a growth of 145.2% compared to the same period of the previous year.
Now the boom in tourists to the Caribbean is also reaching Jamaica.
