Jamaica’s winter tourism surge has brought more than 1 million stay over visitors so far in 2023, according to Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett.
That was one month earlier than Jamaica reached the 1 million mark in 2022.
The winter growth comes ahead of what Bartlett told Caribbean Journal would be a “humongous” summer season for the island.
“From January through December 2022 Jamaica welcomed 2,478,386 stopover arrivals, a 69.2% increase over 2021 and nearly a full recovery to 2019 highs,” said Minister Bartlett. “As of May 10, we received over a million visitor arrivals to date this year, putting our destination on par with 2019 records. We have seen steady growth in our arrivals and continued investment in the tourism sector, which is a tremendous achievement. Projecting ahead for 2023 through 2025, we expect to attract more than 3.8 million visitors in 2023 and grow to more than 5 million visitors in 2025.”
Maintaining those growth levels won’t be easy, but Bartlett says the island has a strong pipeline of hotel rooms and continued airlift development from markets like Chicago, Denver, St Louis, Dallas, Kansas City and London Gatwick.
The hotel pipeline includes as many 8,000 new hotel rooms slated for construction, although that number may be slightly inflated due to stalled projects like the stalled Harmony Cove development and the still-delayed Hard Rock project.
In spite of that, Jamaica’s tourism engine keeps moving, with projections showing the island will eclipse its record-breaking 2019 tourism levels at some point this year.