Jamaica tourism officials anticipate that the tourism industry could begin to recover in five months, according to Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett. 

“I think at about September, we will begin to see the turnaround and I think borders will begin to open and airlines will begin to make initial forays. This is not to say that they’ll be flying everywhere or flying in Jamaica,” Bartlett said this week. 

The timeline for recovery depends on how quickly some of the country’s source markets pull out of the crisis, he said. 

“The United States is our main market. More than 75 per cent of all the visitors who come to Jamaica – cruise and stop over – (come) from the US and Canada and it’s important that we watch carefully how they are handling and responding to recovery,” he said.

Bartlett said officials were already putting plans in place to ensure that Jamaica’s tourism sector was “ahead of the game.”

“Tourism has to be the first out of the block,” he said. “We recognize that the changes that COVID-19 has brought is requiring us to rethink, to retool and to be very agile and adaptive as well as adaptable to the various changes that it is going to bring.”