Jamaica’s tourism train keeps running, as the island looks to emerge from a post-Beryl dip with a strong third and fourth quarter. 

Jamaica is nearing 2.5 million total visitors for 2024, when considering both stopover and cruise arrivals. It’s a record-breaking total for the island, part of a broader plan to reach 5 million total visitors by next year. 

It’s what Jamaica Tourism Minster Edmund Bartlett is calling an “excellent start to this year,” albeit one dampened by sluggish totals in the second quarter due to the passage of Hurricane Beryl. 

It was a very strong first quarter that helped drive the island’s 2024 growth, including a total of 781,081 stayover visitors in the first three months of the year, a 6.4 percent jump compared to last year. 

The island was trending very strongly in June, too — with tickets for international arrivals up 5 percent in the second half of June, according to data provided to Caribbean Journal by analytics firm ForwardKeys. 

But in the run-up to Beryl and the post-storm period, tickets for international arrivals fell by 24 percent between June 30 and July 23. 

Since then, Jamaica has seen a recovery, ForwardKeys said, with what the company called a “swift recovery” to 2023 levels “suggesting the initial hurricane impact was short-lived.”

Traveler confidence, the firm said, “was restored within a matter of days.”

Jamaica Tourist Board Director Donovan White said the island is “confidence the tourism experience we deliver will continue carrying us forward on the path towards success,” he told Caribbean Journal. 

CJ Expert Take: Jamaica’s tourism has been booming for most of the post-pandemic period, with even this summer’s big hurricane (which devastated parts of southern Jamaica) failing to slow it down dramatically. The next few months will tell a lot about its outlook.