Jamaica is in the midst of what is likely to be a record-breaking winter tourist season, and the island is showing no signs of slowing down.
In fact, Jamaica is adding even more new flights — with another three new nonstop routes from the United States launching this week.
In what is a significant boost for Jamaica from the midwestern and western United States, Frontier Airlines is launching nonstop routes to the tourism hotspot of Montego Bay from St. Louis, Chicago and Denver.
The new flights all launch this week: St. Louis-Montego Bay service kicks off on Feb. 23, Denver-Montego Bay service begins on Feb. 24, followed by Chicago-Midway-to-Montego Bay on Feb. 25.
All of the routes are operating three times per week, according to Frontier Airlines.
Frontier has actually been the fastest-expanding airline in the Caribbean since the onset of the pandemic, with the ultra-low-cost carrier rapidly adding new flights across the region, mostly to high-volume tourism destinations like Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cancun.
That expansion has opened up a number of new source markets for Jamaica, including in a number of cities where nonstop flights to the Caribbean tend to be rare.
It’s part of a wider trend that has seen United States-based airlines begin to look to new cities for Caribbean routes, from the continued growth of Austin, Texas (where American Airline has undertaken a big Caribbean expansion) to landmark routes like Cayman Airways’ first-ever service from Los Angeles to Grand Cayman.
This year, Jamaica is expecting to outpace its record-breaking tourism numbers from 2019, buoyed by an all-time-high of seats to the island this winter.
Jamaica tourism officials are projecting more than $4.1 billion in tourism earnings, a number that would exceed last year’s revenues by 13.3 percent.
“Jamaica tourism is back, and our recovery continues to outpace our earlier projections,” Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said last month.
— CJ